TdE - Day 7 Bernkastel Kues - Cochem

Route: Bernkastel Kues - Mosel - Cochem
Distance: 83 km
Elevation: 178 m
Duration: 4:18 h
Weather: sunny and quite warm, but not yet hot. 24 C

Today my second day along the Mosel, and this time the entire day between vineyards in the deep valley of the river. 

My now traditional second breakfast today in the picturesque town of Traben Trarbach, …

… where I found a small local bakery and then ate down at the Mosel. 

In this region the Mosel really is winding it’s way through steep and relatively high hills, sometimes it even seems that it didn’t know where to flow so took a sharp U-turn to look if the opposite direction might have been better. Forcing cyclists to make slow progress. 

There were a few other picturesque villages along the way until Cochem, for example Beilstein:

But the best of the day so far (I am writing this before heading into Cochem for dinner), was this stop along the way in a local winery. They only had cheese cubes to eat, but sitting in the shades of some huge trees and gazing out onto the water was very relaxing. 

PS: also after dinner in Cochem I can confirm that the above was the nicest place today. Dinner was okay, but Cochem is a very touristy town and surprisingly noisy with raucous 50/60 year old people getting drunk. A bit like Ballermann in Mallorca but for the elderly (and much smaller). 

Today maybe I understood why greeting other cyclists isn’t such a thing at the Mosel. The weather was better today and more cyclists had come out from their hiding spots. So yes, today greeting every cyclist was no longer a reasonable option. So I resorted to mainly greet those I overtook. Which were quite a lot. Not because I am fast, but because most cyclists here are quite elderly and at it with a very relaxed pace. Nevertheless, specially the women often made faces that showed their exhaustion. It was a warm day, and most were hopelessly overdressed. So even on an ebike it must have been warm. 

An other thing I noticed, if a man and a woman cycle together, in at least 80 % of the cases, the men cycles in front. And that’s not, so she can enjoy a bit of drafting… reminded me about boot drivers in Leiden. They are also predominantly male, even if a majority of women are on board.