Down Hill All the Way?????

Today was a very unique day!  We left the Barge this morning at 9:15....by bus!  Our boat captain, RJ, and Rikko hauled a trailer with all of our bikes.  We drove 45 minutes, up into the hills.  At the top, it was cool and rainy.  We suited up and set out on our ride, back down to the boat!  We began our ride by cycling around a crater lake, each group went the opposite way around the lake and met in the middle. We very quickly learned that “all downhill “ was BS, as we slugged our way “uphill”!
After our “around the lake” ride, we stopped for coffee before hitting “the trail”.  We rode on an old railway bed all the way down to the Mosel.  It rained on us most of the day but it was an interesting ride.  We rode through several tunnels, one was over .5km long!
We stopped for lunch at Eckfeld, where the restaurant served us delicious soup. It really hit the spot on a rainy day.
We cycled 60 km and the day took it’s toll on all of us.  Although we had s9me terrific downhill runs, we also encountered some uphills that knocked the wind out of us.  We were all happy to see the Mosel River and just a few kilometres later, our boat.














After dinner most of us went on a walk to a local winery.  It is in an old home with an awesome wine cellar.  We sat down in a stone room and tasted about 9 different wines!  By the end of that, we needed to go to bed!!! Goodnight!
























Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final Day of Cycling

Image
The plan was to start out cycling at 9:00, cycle for 50 km and then ride the boat for the final 10 km into Cochem.  Since it was raining in the morning, we altered our plan.  We are riding down the river until 11:00 and then cycling all the way into Cochem, about 45 km. A much better plan! We hopped off the boat in Zell and took 20 minutes to check out the town before hitting the trail. It had quit ☔️ raining and the sun began to poke out.  We rode along the Mosel, enjoying the amazing scenery that never got old.  It is mind boggling how they can grow grapes so high up into the hills. It was cool to see that they had these narrow rail lines running up the hill. They have little cars on them to take the workers up and down the steep hills. We stopped in another lovely town along the river.  They are all so beautiful with the narrow, winding, cobblestone streets and old timber houses.  We split up to find a place to have lunch. We continued on about 10 km...
Read more

Home Sweet Home

Image
Most of us are now back home!  (Some are staying behind to continue their own travels).  We started out very early yesterday morning.  We got up at 5:00 am and had a light breakfast before leaving the boat.  We had a taxi van come to the boat at 6:30 am to pick up our luggage and take it to the train station. Terry, Roy and Eugene travelled with the luggage to help the drive unload it.  The rest of us walked the 2 km to the station, in the rain! We took the 7:00 train to Koblenz.  It was an interesting ride as we encouraged a lot of German people, dressed in their traditional clothing, likely going to work at an Octoberfest venue. I was quite amazed to see that some of them were drinking beer! We had to wait an hour at the Koblenz station before catching our high speed train to the Frankfurt airport.  There were sure some “interesting “ characters hanging around the station! It’s a good thing that we arrived in plenty of time to the airport, as it i...
Read more

And We are Off!

Image
The day has finally arrived!  We were pumped and ready to hit the road. Yesterday the forecast called for rain today but then it improved this morning.  For those of you that followed our bike and Barge four years ago, you may remember that it rained every day!! So, we were excited when it wasn’t raining this morning. We set out at 9:00 am, with 11 in each group plus a guide.  Our first stop was 10 km down the road at Thionville.  We checked out a beautiful church and then went to a lovely outside square for coffee. While we were there it started to rain lightly but it only lasted for about two minutes!!! We rode along the Mosel River through various types of landscapes.  The best way is to post the pictures. We stopped for lunch in Malling (still in France) at 1:00.  It was lovely out and we sat outside. In the afternoon we came to the crossroads of three countries, France, Germany and Luxembourg.  We travelled back and forth between Germany ...
Read more