TdE - D35 Luxembourg - Martelange

Route: Luxembourg - Steinfurt - Redange - Martelange 

Distance: 64 km

Elevation: 789 m

Duration: 4:22 h

Weather: sunny with some clouds, 17 C

Today towards the dreaded Ardennes! I THINK I am taking them in from the high point, so that is probably good, but nevertheless even tomorrow and the day after the plan foresees quite some elevations, over 500 m every day! So not sure how these Ardennes are organized. 

Today I think I was mainly riding TOWARDS the Ardennes but not yet really IN them, at least if one takes the definition of Ardennes as a mountainous, forested area. 

Luxembourg itself seems to be a relatively sparsely populated country, so I needed some planning to make sure there were some places to eat on the way, but it worked out perfectly, and now after dinner I can say, that today was probably the day were I ate the best in this entire trip… and I probably ate all the meat that should be permitted per month if climate change could be averted… 

For lunch I had identified Redange as a village with some options, and the restaurant I chose (the one with the best evaluation in that village) was excellent. I took the steak that was offered as one of the “plat du jour” options, and it was really a filet mignon rather than a steak, and very well prepared. 

And now at dinner, already in Belgium but just about, a steak tartare which was also excellent… although a raw egg on top would have improved it even a bit more… 

Talking about food, my first stop after about 20 in was in Steinfurt where I had second breakfast plus I bought an “Einback”, a simple pastry which I bought quite frequently in Germany as a child. I had my rest in the village square which had some strangely decorated trees under the pretext of an arts exhibition with the topic “Impf-Stoff”.

A good part of the ride today was on old railway tracks, which is really an extremely comfortable way to ride up or down an incline. I will research them more and maybe do some more excursions specifically to these kind of cycle ways. It seems that Belgium potentially is full of them, as apparently Belgium was the country with most railway kilometers before shutting down a lot of them and later converting many of them into bicycle lanes. Something to be explored. 

But today it was the turn of some Luxembourg cycling railways, including this very, very chilly tunnel (fortunately it was well lit though).

These mushrooms along the way from far seemed like a piece of art, but actually I think they are extremely poisonous mushrooms. But nice to look at:

Luxembourg seems to be uncertain which language to use, so all the languages address used mixed. It is quite normal to see one warning sign in German and the next in French, or like today in the restaurant, the toilets were indicated in French, but how to open the door to the toilet in German. And then every now and then things are explained in Luxembourgese. It kind of seemed that people used preprinted material in any language, as long as it was readily available. 

TdE - Day 34 Kitzing - Luxembourg

Route: Kitzing - Schengen - Luxembourg 
Distance: 51 km
Elevation: 497 m
Duration: 3:23 h
Weather: Sun and clouds and for the Forest time a bit chilly, 19 C 

Today I crossed so many boarders! France to Germany only to leave Germany again after less than a kilometer and cross over a bridge into Luxemburg, nothing less than to Schengen. And later in the day crossing again into France, without really noticing it, until I came by the typical French “mairie” and “liberté, égalité, fraternité” signs so ubiquitous in France. But my path quickly turned back into Luxemburg. 

Around Schengen a lot of streets were kind of closed for some Rally by Skoda. Or so I thought. I just saw “Skoda” and “road closure due to race”, so I assumed it would be a car rally. But I was wrong, but pure change I had a break right along the route when the race came by. 

 

First a lot of cars with spare bikes, then more police, then the peloton of the Tour de Luxembourg… and finally a LOT more cars.

I had no idea that the Tour de Luxembourg was underway, and even less so that they would use parts of MY route! 

So I got to see my first bike race of the year swooping by me. And although I had a lunch stop underway I was at my hotel before they made it to their destination, so I could watch the last 16 km of the race live on GCN!

I continued on over the false flat landscape of Luxembourg. It’s true that once I had managed to push up the bike the steep incline close to Schengen, the rest of Luxembourg is relatively flat, but RELATIVELY flat only. From a Dutch perspective still quite a lot of up and downs. The landscape of the rest of Europe really puts the Dutch landscape into perspective. That kind of flatness is NOT normal. 

Close to Luxembourg city Komoot planned for me the cycle path on the left, but luckily on the other side of that small river was a well asphalted one, reserved for cyclists and pedestrians. 

And that’s how I came into the city and my basic Ibis hotel by the station, where Roubaix can sleep with me:

After a shower and washing my clothes I went by foot to explore the city. Somehow I had imagined Luxembourg as this fabulously rich country, where everything would be extremely posh and emanate wealth, but that isn’t really the case. It seems a pretty normal city, and I still wonder why it is a UNESCO world heritage site. Probably every country has a right to at least one UNESCO site and Luxembourg tried with it capital. 

What was nice though is the view from a bridge down into the deep valley that divides the city and has been planted to be a garden. 

Luxembourg, both the city, but also smaller villages all seems to be under construction. Everywhere construction workers, machinery, closed streets…the local tourist office of Luxembourg city was no exception. 

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. 

TdE - Day 5 Bütgenbach - Metzdorf

Route: Bütgenbach - St. Vith - Neuerburg - Metzdorf
Distance: 136 km
Elevation: 780
Duration: 6:38 h
Weather: gray, some rain, but mostly dry, 20 C

Today turned out to be better weather than I thought and I did nearly 60 km more than originally planned, thanks to advancing reasonably fast, specially until Neuerburg which was my original destination of today, thanks to the general downhill and the cycle paths on former train lines. 

It really makes a huge difference. Former train lines have a steady gradient which is extremely comfortable both for riding up as well as down. While more normal cycling ways, even if they follow a river, so are generally downhill, have much more up and down. 

When I looked at the weather forecast this morning it seemed to lie. It said it’s not going to rain in the next 3 h, but as a matter of fact it WAS raining. Drizzling, but still. But there was nothing to be done about it and it didn’t rain to hard. So I started taking the train-bicycle path in front of my accommodation downhill. After a few km it stopped drizzling and there I understood that it hadn’t really rained before either, simply the clouds were hanging so low, that I was inside. 

My first stop was in St. Vith again in a German bakery, this time I had a “Donauwelle”, a cake I like a lot and which for a ride towards the Danube makes a lot of sense to eat.

Shortly after I restarted it started to rain again a bit, but never for very long or very hard. 

About 37 km into today’s ride I met Felix, a chemistry engineering student from Delft on his way to Marseille to proof his flat mates wrong that he wouldn’t be able to make it. So far he has got a good start, doing about 150 km/day since his start in Delft and absolutely loving it.

Although he is doing far longer average distances than I do, we were actually going at a pretty similar speed. He was faster uphill (but overall there wasn’t that much of it today) and I was faster downhill thanks to my better breaks. And it turned out we were both going to Neuerburg… and I had a route planned while he was following Google maps. So we joined up for the day and had nice chitchat along the way. 

When we arrived at Neuerburg it was still quite early, maybe around 14:30 and the weather was reasonable so I decided to cancel my reservation I had in a hotel there and rebook about 60 km further down the valley. 

We took a longer rest inside the castle of Neuerburg, which was open although there was no one around. I finally ate my sandwiches I had been lugging around for 2-3 days. Plus the castle had a modern toilet for us to use and refill our bottles. 

Although the cycle path after Neuerburg did follow a river, first the Enz, then the Prüm and finally the Sauer, it had more up and down than I had expected. Simply sometimes it goes down right by the river and then a bit higher through some fields, then through a village and down again to the river…

When we came through Irrel one could still see the damage done by the recent floods. 

I knew that there had been severe floods (more than 100 people got killed) in July, but when I had searched where these floods had been, I thought it was mainly along the Ahr, which is an other river roughly in this region, but a region I did not plan to cross. What I hadn’t realize is that actually the valley of the Prüm and Sauer had also been severely affected. The main chaos has been cleared, but one can still see the remnants of the flood of what now seems to be a quiet, small river.

At two points our cycling way was blocked but the main road is open and we could divert easily. Actually it seems that the main road isn’t open since so long. So we’ll, I feel a bit unprepared. 

This also in retrospect explains why we met so few other cyclotourists. 

After a bit over 130 km I arrived at my very old style basic hotel in the small village of Metzdorf. The restaurant was closed and I had eaten my breads under way, but luckily the small pedestrian bridge over to Moersdorf in Luxemburg was open and the local Chinese restaurant as well. So I had a rather bad Chinese dinner, but it was filling enough for a cyclist.

TdE - Rough Plan

This summer between jobs I have nearly 7 weeks off and decided to use them for a cycling trip through Europe. As I am not heat resistant, Northern Europe is the chosen destination. 

My initial plan was to go with my parents (by car) to Austria first, spend some time in the village where my father grew up and then ride slowly back from there to the Netherlands. However as my father has a form of dementia and after a recent experience with him going on vacation to another place (Bayreuth) where he had spent many years in the past, my mother decided that it wasn't such a good idea to go on vacation. It seems to be much easier for him to be able to sleep at home where he knows everything. So with the starting point in Austria gone, I can now just start at my door steps. I haven't modified the overall plan too much... only that I added a lot more cycling kilometers to the plan. We'll see how it goes. Plans are there to be changed. 

Overall the tour will be very roughly speaking 2700 km. Assuming a week at my parents place, that would mean about 66 km every day. That is definitely doable... at least here in the flats of the Netherlands. But every day??? We will see. Worst case in all countries I pass it is somehow possible to put the bicycle on a train. Not everywhere super easy, but possible in general terms. No stress! 

Tour d'Europe - Part 1 Leiden to Colmar

Tour d'Europe - Part 2 Colmar back to Leiden

In Google maps this is just a VERY rough tour. I actually use Komoot to plan my rides. Although Komoot doesn't really know about already pre-existing cycling routes. For these I have recently found a very good web page:  https://www.biroto.eu/de/ where it is possible to download (and then upload to komoot) GPX files of a lot of official cycling routes. 

Roughly the idea is to head South towards Belgium pretty straight on, and then get on the Amsterdam - Venice cycling route, which follows the Vennbahnweg, later on the Mosel and the Rhine. Then a few days stop at my parents place before continuing to head South towards the Danube where I'll catch the Danube cycling way heading up to the spring of the river. Then over the black forest to Freiburg and Colmar and then up North again following Eurovelo 5 which kind of runs parallel to the Rhine up towards Luxemburg, Belgium and into Brussels. The last kilometers from Brussels back to Leiden are not yet planned at all... but at that stage I should be pretty comfortable with the day to day planning and also know much better how much time is left. If I am pressed for time, Brussels - Leiden are about 200 km, so easily doable in 2 days. If I am not, I can explore further Belgium. Maybe take in some famous cobbled climbs (likely pushing up the bike though)... or maybe ride a bit to the South to famous Roubaix and let my Spezialized Roubaix sense the air of proper Roubaix?