A great days cycling; it was cooler a perfect 23C, the wind seemed to be behind us so we were peddling easily at 27kms an hour , there seemed to be more downhills than uphills and moselle gorge changed to steep wooded gorges before returning to the wine groves.Our massive leg muscles now meant we could actually pass electric bikes…yes.Lovely small villages along the way full of history and plenty of places to stay everywhere. Detzem looked parrticularly attractive but a bit too early to stop. Detzem was named after a Roman milestone that was found here meaning 10 roman miles along the roman wine route from the big Roman town of Trier.

Morning tea stop was at Neumagen which had a good range of coffee shops open even on a Sunday. If you’re a Roman history person you’d need to stay here. Replica model of the roman wineship found here is on show in the mainstreet, plus a statue of a Roman poet, Ausonius who waxed lyrical about the Moselle and the wine from here.Pretty little village so worth spending some time here.

 

From Neumagen we passed the town of Piesport which had the largest Roman wine press here. Today Piesport is known for its inferior export of cheap wine blend Piesporter Michelsberg, (pisspot) however on the opposite bank there is a sign for Goldtropfchen which literally means Golden drop so very expensive! If you are partial to a glass or two then every village we passed had at least several wine cellars open for wine tasting.

We veered off uphill for lunch to a restaurant overlooking the vines advertising cyclists welcome. Quite a large place but very slow service so it did end up with a long lunch. There was a lovely salad bar and we had to wait so long for our main course we ate a lot but we were later to regret eating all that sauerkraut, a very wi ndy afternoon! Very tasty lightly cooked tender meat but enough meat for a week, I”ll have to remember only go for the fish option in Germany.

 

Somehow Id imagined where we were going to finish the day was  in a small village , of Bernkastel as we arrived I realised it was not that. The carparks on the banks of the Moselle were huge, tourist buses were parked, and several cruise ships were moored up, a tourist hot spot.

Dilemma Id booked a hotel as it was a Sunday and as I thought it was a tiny place hadn’t checked where it was. We managed to work out from a map where we thought the hotel was but misread it so rode across the river and then realised we’d been on the right side after all. Then when we did find the hotel it was closed with a note on the window telling us to phone them as reception was closed.

After phoning we had numbers to get the door keys from a key box, then once we’d got into our room there was another set of instructions plus key to get to the garage 5mins away to store our bikes. I think I prefer a reception!There was also a strange small box in our room humming away we finally figured out it was a fridge, very useful but I’m not sure about the humming all night. Yes we’d got a room on the 3rd floor. I think they assume as your cycling 6 flights of stairs are nothing to you! I ended up going up and down them 3 times just to get our luggage into the room and get the garage key and instructions.Lovely outlook onto the church next door except the bell tower is also right next to our room, we hope the bells stop at night..There are no other sounds in the hotel it almost feels like a ghost hotel totally deserted.

We went off exploring at 5pm once the crowds had left the town, plenty of mediavel 14th century half timbered houses, plenty of wine cellars for tastes and walks through the vineyards for views of the town and the Moselle The local castle overlooks the town but has been in ruins since a fire in the late 1600s.The oldest house from 1485 is now a small wine bar, very quaint.

Only 2 more nights and we should be in Koblenz where the Moselle joins the Rhine,  tnis river has whizzed by, still it is only a tributary of the Rhine.

 

Hotel Binz- good deal on booking.com some of old hotels here will cost up to 160 euros

1 Markt place

Bernkastel