Month: July 2010

This morning, I emailed my friend Simone with all the bad things about cycle touring – most particularly having to leave camp without breakfast as we did this morning.

Less than 5 mins up the river and we find a bakery, and a 3rd century roman funerary monument to eat it next to. Something great like this happens every day. Even a day which contains all the bad things will have an amazing moment that for me negates all the crap. That’s what I love about cycle touring.

By the way, this is called the Igeler Saeule, it’s UNESCO listed and it’s only still here because the early Christians didn’t know what it was and so didn’t destroy it.

European sky is different from Australian sky…vapour trails.

…and we have 3G again. Apologies for the extended silence, we spent rather more time out of the country than we had planned. But what’s new?

Here’s a pic of the amazing rock formations in the Muellerthal that I mentioned in the last post.

Climbing friends should note that these rocks were crap candidates for climbing – wet and slimy and soft sandstone. Don’t go there!

For the LP readers, we did all the Luxembourg highlights from the book (the Muellerthal is one) and they were all top notch. We gotta get those highlights on the website!

Today we head into Belgium to the town of Malmedi…And after that we plan to head south along the Our and Saar rivers, probably with a side trip into Luxembourg. But don’t hold us to that, we could change our minds at any time…But we haven’t changed them yet!

We’d decided to head to Malmedi on the advice of a cyclist we spoke to a few days ago who had agreed that Monschau was beautiful and had pointed out Malmedi on our map and said that was beautiful too. I can’t say that we agreed with him! Malmedi is a nice enough town, but it doesn’t really rate on the beautiful scale. The ride to get there was beautiful though. High pine forests and undulating country, always climbing. We crossed over into Belgium at some unknown point – it wasn’t until we saw Belgian post boxes that we knew we were no longer in Germany. In Belgium we skirted the southern edges of the High Fens. Both Guy and I imagined something out of Lord of the Rings – marshes, mists – but they just looked like more undulating forests.

The climbing stopped with a huge downhill into Malmedi and our first proper Belgian town. A few things struck us immediately – we had to order our ice creams in French (help!), the tourist office had a lot of information in English and at least half of it was useful (we have found German tourist information to be next to useless mostly) and we could straight away find unlocked wireless to use.

The wireless situation has been frustrating. Last trip we had no problems finding unlocked wireless somewhere in every town (except in Italy). But this time around it’s been near impossible. On quizzing some of our friends we discovered that the law has changed since we were here. Last time the law was such that although you were responsible for what was downloaded on your wireless connection, you could get out of it by having an unlocked connection and claiming that it wasn’t you. Now that loophole is closed and you’re accountable no matter what, so everyone has locked wireless. Bad news for us.

In Malmedi we met Evelijn, a friend I met on the Tour d’Afrique last year (she shared my near-death-experience-with-a-bus and white-ladies-peeing-by-the-side-of-the-road escapades). When she heard that I was going to be this close to her home town of Rotterdam she immediately volunteered to drive over to meet us and ride with us. It was really great to see her. We spent the evening chatting and reminiscing over dinner in the town square and then she rode with us to Sankt Vith the next day.

We had been delighted to discover from the tourist office that there was an old rail trail for all of our next days ride. However, even trains must go up hill and it was a steady climb for the first 8kms that left us hot and sweaty in the 35 degree heat. But from there it was pretty much downhill for the rest of the day through beautiful scenery of fields and forests and small villages. Evelijn left us after lunch to ride back to her car and back to work the next day. Hopefully she’ll be in Australia sometime soon (she wants to ride across the Nullabor, crazy) and we can catch up again. We kept heading downhill to Burg Reuland (scene of Guys birthday dinner, blogged previously).

From here we were on the Our river, which forms the border of Germany and Belgium, and then Germany and Luxembourg. Of course there is a denkmal (monument) at the point where all three meet (Dreilaenderecke, or three lands corner) so we stopped and read, in German, all about the agreeing of the borders. It seems odd to me that these borders were still all changing so recently – 1957. I guess it’s because I come from a country whose borders are unchanging and all defined by oceans.

Although the Ourtal had a 10km section on the map that had no road along it, I got excited when we found a map board that showed walking and mountain bike tracks. Since the alternative was a 200m climb out of the valley onto the hills and then back down, the tracks were worth a try. The first few kms were really beautiful riding along secluded dirt tracks next to the river. Unfortunately after a couple of kilometres the vehicle track became a walking track that was too rough to ride with panniers . Instead of turning back (never go back!) we tracked back only slightly to the MTB path and ended up climbing those 200m on steep rocky ground instead of smooth bitumen. My so far unblemished record at choosing great routes from the map took a bit of a beating that day, but I redeemed myself later.

Back on bike paths along the Our river, we stopped at Vianden (fabulous castle) and Echternach (abbey founded by St Willibrord, famous for hanky-waving spring procession), where we had a rest day. Echternach is in the Petit Suisse Luxembourgoise. Having never been there, I don’t know what the big Suisse looks like but this little one was beautiful. Thick, dark forests, streams, huge rocky outcrops looming in the forest – this was Lord of the Rings country. We spent a morning walking through the forests and then visited the abbey. It was still hot so we finished off the day with a swim.

Recently, the humid weather has been culminating in thunderstorms. All of a sudden a crazy wind starts that nearly blows us off our bikes if we’re riding and leaves a mess of leaves and branches afterwards. The sky goes dark and then all hell lets loose. Luckily so far we’ve always been able to find a handy pub to pop into, or we’ve already been tucked up in the tent. The annoying thing is that after the storm it’s still just as humid as before!

There was much discussion on what route to take from Echternach. Guy was all for retracing our route up river for a few kms to then head up the Sauer river to Diekirch, keeping the hills to a minimum. But I, not sure that we had seen all of what the Petite Suisse had to offer and having espied roads marked as scenic on the map, was arguing for getting out of the rivers and onto new high ground. And here is where I redeemed myself. The road passed through more of the amazing rocky outcrops and forest that we’d walked through the day before. But it was better. It wasn’t long before we’d left the bikes by the side of the road and were exploring on foot. The rest of the days’ ride, through the Muellerthal and Larochette were just as beautiful and well worth the hills we climbed.

So, yesterday we arrived in Diekirch, home of Luxembourg beer and also of an excellent museum on the Battle of the Ardennes. It was chock full of guns, tanks, vehicles, you name it they had it. Guy was in his element, although there was way too much to see in the couple of hours that we had. I was sobered by the thought that pretty much every place we’d ridden through in the last week, every photograph we’d taken, had a horrible war past, and so recently.

Today we are riding down to Luxembourg city, a short ride, with hopefully no hills, as they do take a toll on the legs!

For the stats lovers:
total kms so far – 941
ice creams to schnitzel ratio – 12 to 5

Four courses (followed by not sleeping in a tent). Surprisingly un- German – oh yes, we’re in Belgium!

Salmon

Yummy carrot, potato and leek soup

Turkey

As you can see, we were quite excited by a meal that wasn’t schnitzel!

Here’s the amazing Wuppertal schwebebahn!

And here are all the locks on the Cologne bridge:

And, as an added bonus, here’s the beautiful scenery that we rode through this morning as we crossed from Germany into Belgium:

We left you in Trier, about a week ago. Since then we’ve done a bit of cycling and a lot of socialising…

The ride up the Kyll river was just fabulous. Although we really enjoyed the Mosel, it had a lot of tourists on it, whereas the Kyll had just us. The valley was narrow with forest coming right down to the river. Whilst there was a railway, there weren’t many trains on it. We took a short diversion to see a castle (Burgruine Ramstein) but other than that we were just happy to slowly climb up the river valley.

We spent the night at Gerolstein. The town itself was quite modern and didn’t really have much charm. Also, the springs themselves were not in town, but rather up a huge hill. We had to make do with filling our water bottles from the spring in town – which tasted the same anyway. (Sadly, after a day in the sun and a lot of bumps to de-fizz it the water just wasn’t as good as a fresh-bought bottle). Gerolstein is also the home of the Gerolsteiner Dolomites. Like the Italian Dolomites, the cliffs that surround the town are an old coral reef that was once at the bottom of a sea. We were pretty tired from all the uphill riding so we contented ourselves with looking at them from our campsite rather than make the 7km hike around them.

An easy ride over undulating hills took us from the Kyll valley over to the Ahr valley. After riding uphill for so long we literally whizzed down. It was too fast. As I said in a previous post, it’s just too easy to miss things when you are going downhill. Also, this bike path tended to stick to the river and not divert into towns. Luckily we chose to divert into Mayschoss where we spent a couple of hours tasting wines and talking to the vintner. The Ahr valley is one of the only Pinot Noir regions in Germany. It has steep vineyards like I described in the Mosel, but unlike the Mosel it is very narrow, so the winds skip across the valley, leaving the vineyards hot and dry. They had some excellent wines and we bought a few bottles to take with us, as well as sending some home for Guy’s birthday present.

After all this wine-drinking it was a long ride down the river to meet up with the Rhein and then up the Rhein to Bonn. In Bonn we stayed with our friends Uwe and Simone again, this time in their recently rented apartment. In fact it was so recently rented that they hadn’t even moved in properly. We, and they, camped on the floor of the flat with our mats and sleeping bags (they have been camping at friends places for about a month since they got back so it wasn’t unusual for them!) It was good to see them again and after dinner at the local biergarten we spent a late night chatting and drinking wine.

Although we had another night in Bonn, we spent the next day in Cologne. As luck would have it my friend Jayne, who lives in the States, was in Germany. We’d worked out that this was the best day that we could meet as she was making the long train journey from Amsterdam to Frankfurt and would be coming through Cologne. So after spending the morning visiting the Australia shop (for thank you presents) and the “Temple” (the huge Globetrotter outdoor store in Cologne) we met Jayne for lunch. She had her boyfriend Jason in tow and it was really nice to meet him and to just hang out and chat in a foreign city.

The humidity that had been in the air for the past week finally became a huge thunderstorm that afternoon and we took shelter in the cathedral. Cologne cathedral is truly awe-inspiring and the thunder rolling around it only added to the sense of occasion. What we didn’t realise was that whilst we were in there the spire was struck by lightning! We thought that the priests were all running around because of the flooding (rain was literally pouring in through some of those ancient windows) but when the rain finally stopped we ventured out to find that the cathedral was surrounded by firetrucks and a police cordon. Of course this meant that tours up the tower were out but we made a second visit to Cologne a day or so later and saw the tower. Back in Bonn we had another fun night with Uwe and Simone, but the second late night in a row was hard to take. I had to retire around midnight although Guy and Simone made it through until 2.30am!

I had mixed emotions the next day as we cycled off. I was sad to leave our Bonn friends – we’re not exactly going to be able to drop in for a cuppa anytime soon – but I was also excited to get to Dusseldorf and catch up with one of Dad’s best friends who I hadn’t seen for a long time. In fact, I remember Rob best from my childhood when my sister and I used to climb up him! Rob married Ingrid, a german gal, a couple of years ago and is living just out of Dusseldorf in a village called Knittkuhl.

We stayed with Rob and Ingrid for three nights. They have a very tiny apartment and it was a bit of a squeeze with four of us. But they also have a huge garden! We were quite excited by the garden because it’s of the type that we ride past all the time and wonder who owns them and why. Now we know – it’s the tiny apartment dwellers who don’t have much space. Although Rob had intended that we spend quite a bit of time in the garden we were so busy that we only visited it twice. We had a BBQ there when we arrived and we stopped to take some photos in the morning sun on the day we left.

We stayed busy by exploring the local area. We spent the first day on a cycling tour of the local towns guided by Rob. It was interesting to get a bit more of an insight into some of the things that we see a lot as we ride. For example the local farmer’s trout pond, he’s the guy that we see selling fish from a caravan at the local market. And also the big grocery barn that a farmer rents out to assorted stallholders who sell anything from fresh fruit and veggies, to cured meats, to cheese, jams, etc. The trouble is that I want to buy all this yummy stuff, but on a bike we can only really buy day-to-day.

And on the second day we took the train to the Wuppertal and then to Cologne. What’s the Wuppertal I hear you ask? Well, it’s a valley, and it has a schwebebahn in it. The schwebebahn is a 100-year-old monorail system that runs above the river. It’s very, very, cool. I’ll post a pic separately but in the meantime you should google it. It’s not touristy or anything, it’s just the local transport for the valley and covered in the daily train ticket. We took the half hour journey up the valley and we could have easily spent half the day riding up and down.

In Cologne we climbed the cathedral tower, peered at the lovely roman mosaic through the windows of the museum (we were too late to go in), met Ingrid after work, walked on a section of old roman road, bought a Solingen peeling knife from an amazing store (interesting design-focussed products, old and new), ate a traditional German meal in Frueh brewery and also visited the railway bridge but forgot to bring a lock to put on it. In the last couple of years a tradition has started where people come and put a lock on the bridge for luck, mostly for relationships I think. I’ll post a pic. We finished off a great day with an ice cream and a walk along the Rhein promenade in Dusseldorf.

Now here’s where our plans took a turn, so far for the better! We had planned to catch the train to Berlin and ride to Prague, but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. There were a few reasons: we hadn’t really enjoyed the Rhein and were worried that the Elbe might be too big and touristy for us, it felt like a long way to go and a long way to get back at the end of the trip, and most of all it just felt like we hadn’t finished with cycling in this part of the country. So, we changed our plans. We took a train to Aachen, near the Belgian border, and began cycling from there. We’ve spent two days cycling from Aachen to Monschau. It’s been hilly but really beautiful. We’ve: seen a couple of amazingly beautiful towns – Korneli-muenster and Monschau, ridden along the Rur river and the Rursee, been scorched by the 32+ degree heat, delighted in the cool shade of the German forests (I’m amazed at how cool they are when it’s so hot in the sun, a good 10 degrees cooler at least), swum in one of the coldest streams we’ve ever found (glacier water excluded) and generally had an excellent time.

Today we head into Belgium to the town of Malmedi where we will meet up with a Dutch friend of mine that I cycled in Africa with. And after that we plan to head south along the Our and Saar rivers, probably with a side trip into Luxembourg. But don’t hold us to that, we could change our minds at any time…

For the stats lovers:
total kms so far – 723
ice creams to schnitzel ratio – 9 to 5

We’ve been in Cologne a couple of times in the last few days. What did we do?

Paid a visit to the home of 4711 Eau de Cologne. This was my first ever perfume! Dad bought a bottle for his big, brave girl when she was 5 and had to spend a night in hospital. Thanks Dad, did I ever tell you I was expecting a giant teddy bear?

And we caught up with my oldest friend, Jayne, who lives in the states now but was en route from Amsterdam to Frankfurt and stopped off for a few hours to catch up. We ate at Cologne’s oldest brewery and visited the cathedral during a HUGE thunderstorm. The cathedral was hit by lightning and we were evacuated (hmm, very dramatic, they made us leave). It was a fabulous day, all the more so because it was so unlikely!

Finally, in late-breaking news, we’ve changed our plans and are not going to cycle the Elbe. More later…

An inspired diversion from the bike path into Mayschoss and this is the result!
The Ahr Valley is one of the only places in Germany that grows Pinot Noir. They have only 540 hectares of vines so it’s hard to buy Ahr wine outside of the Ahrtal. Combine that with Guy’s love of Pinot Noir and the fact it’s his birthday next week and we just had to buy some. We’re schlepping three bottles with us for the rest of the day and have shipped another six bottles home!

Hmm, after tasting all this before lunch, how will we stay upright on the bikes?