TdE - Day 6 Metzdorf - Bernkastel Kues

Route: Metzdorf - Trier - Mosel - Bernkastel Kues
Distance: 96 km
Elevation: 242 m
Duration: 5:18 h
Weather: Cloudy but no rain, 20 C

In principle I had decided not to ride THAT much today, but if you reserve a hotel 60 km+ down the road at 13:30 before having had a lunch break, it’s kind of clear that I wouldn’t arrive by 16:00. Let’s see if tomorrow what I think I want to do and what I actually do will be better aligned. 

After a few km in Luxemburg down the Sauer (or Sûre in French) it flew into the Mosel and I took my third picture of a country sign …

… and then turned left, Mosel downwards. Strangely my planned route in Komoot thinks that over the 225 km from Metzdorf to Koblenz there will be 1,190 m of climbing, but today in 96 km of it I only did about 250 m and I can’t really see that there will be that much more climbing to come. After all I am cycling DOWN the Mosel. 

The Mosel, a river that is winding and winding it’s way. 

It isn’t the first time I am doing a cycling trip along the Mosel. I was here once with my father when I was maybe 10 years old, for a cycling trip. I remember that one day I suggested to take a shortcut. Just straight through instead of following the river. Well it might have saved us 20 km of cycling, but it did cost us time for sure. Because first we were pushing up the bicycles over a high and steep mountain and then downwards we couldn’t cycle either because it was a forest road and too steep for us. I learned an important lesson that day and will now vow to not commit the same error again. 

My first stop of the day was in Trier, an old Roman town as witnessed by the largest Therms outside Rome (which unfortunately for me got destroyed 1700 years ago by the Germanics! A real pity as definitely one of the things that is soooooooo missing from this cycling trip is the hot onsen bath in the evening. Such a pleasure when cycling in Japan.) 

Originally my idea was to eat something sweet under the Porta Nigra, but when I went to a bakery not too far away it also had savory stuff including “Fleischkäse”, so I was tempted. Not the best decision as it wasn’t a specially good one. 

Once out of Trier the Mosel trip proper started. Well actually no, and yes… it started in the sense that I was now riding along the Mosel for the entire rest of the day, but what one imagines for “Mosel”, i.e. the steep vineyards doesn’t start until a bit more down the river. First one needs to get through some “normal” and even industrial river part. 

What I also noticed, is how few people actually greet each other while cycling. Yes, in the Netherlands greeting other cyclist isn’t the most common either, but to a certain extend I do understand it. There are just too many cyclists around. However in the region in Belgium where I cycled, greeting other cyclists was the done thing. Yesterday where we met only a few cyclists the whole day. It was the dome thing. But today along the Mosel giving as little as a nod was already too much for 90% of the cyclists. And yes, there were many more cyclists than on a rainy day in a remote location, but much less cyclists than in the Netherlands, This lack of greeting capacity was very surprising to me. 

I quite consistently greeted other cyclists and even pedestrians. Maybe on average I greeted 75 % of people I encountered. But I got only very little back. 

An other observation was the type of cyclists. Mostly elderly couples, sometimes groups of elderly couples, a few young families, some groups of men and some solo men. But I think that in the entire trip so far, I haven’t seen an other solo female cyclists on a tour. Is it really such an outrageous idea for a woman to cycle alone through countries such as Belgium and Germany? I myself wouldn’t describe me as specially adventurous and I wouldn’t do a solo cycling trip in let’s say Tunisia, Turkey, Vietnam or Argentine, just to name a few countries where my prejudice (?) tells me that it can’t be safe for a solo female cyclist. Or at least not safe enough for me to FEEL safe. But Belgium? Germany? 

After Trier, I had two more stops along the way to eat and drink (nothing to write home about) before arriving around 19:00 at my hotel for the night. Getting a good shower, doing my laundry and finally walking into the picturesque town of Bernkastel-Kues for a filling dinner (potato gratin with some local white wines). 

This castle is towering (in the most literally sense of the word) above this old village. I might actually have been there back on my first trip to the Mosel with a bike, as I remember that one night we were in a youth hostel which was in an old castle up-up the hill. Maybe at my parents there are still some old dispositives to check.