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Published: October 5th 2014
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Day 16: Ernst
30
th September 2014
No run this morning as the plan was to go on bike ride. One of the many benefits of having Mandy on this trip is that she is able to ask all the right questions at trains stations ect and so get the best routes and tickets. I say this early as had we gone in the opposite direction to the way we did we would have been going uphill rather than downhill which would have changed the whole day and experience.
We hired 4 bikes from a local lady – as I’ve said earlier the bike culture is fantastic and it is such a convenient and practical form of transport. The bikes have fat tires and fat seats so they are comfortable to ride. Each bike had 7 gears and 2 of us had baskets. We had packed some food and water and so we were set. We rode 5K into Cochem along the bike track and went to the train station where Mandy confirmed the route and we bought our tickets. We caught the train with our bikes – there is a special carriage
on every train for cyclists. We took the train to a town called Witlich and then disembarked. It was a bit tricky finding the bike track but once we did it was the start of a beautiful day. It was cool and overcast but not windy and so a perfect day for a ride. The ride was peaceful and it was a great way to see the countryside up close and personal. What really made an impression on all of us was the steepness of the vineyards and how close they were to the bike tracks and roads. It would be nothing to get of your bike and simply take 4 steps and be walking in someone’s vineyard.
The bike tracks are 98% in perfect condition and so there are no surprises. Its also a bit strange to run or walk or ride outside and not have to me aware of whether or not a snake is going to jump out and bite you. We travelled to a town Bernkuestel-Kues 15Km from the station and it was there that we stopped to have some lunch so we sat by the river and ate our rolls. By now
the sun had started to peep through the clouds and the day was warming up. This town was known for being the epicenter of the Mosel region which is famous for its Riesling wines. One of the things that you can do there is visit a place with has wines from 150 local wineries and for about $20 pp you can go into their cellar (unsupervised) and taste as many and as much wine as you like. The cellar had this great set up where there were basically tasting stations which had an open barrel that was cooled and inside it it had about 20 different bottles wines all clearly numbered and labeled. The wines were grouped according to their sweetness or dryness and it is unique to Germany have a dry (trocken) and semi dry (halptrocken) category as well. Needless to say we took full advantage of this experience. Frank and Louis tried most of the dry whites, tried a few reds and rose and finished off with a sparkling. Mandy and I took to the sweeter wines and explored the dessert style wines. I have to say the good one were really good and the bad ones pretty
ordinary. I would also say that it was good to have some respect and experience with tasting wines as we sampled small amounts of each wine – it would be very easy to imagine someone going in there and thinking it was Christmas and just drinking full glass after full glass and just getting pissed. Sadly, as we were on bikes and still traveling we were unable to buy as many wines as we would have liked to but we did buy a couple including the sweet wine Mandy and I liked to most to have with dessert one night.
In spite of Frank and Louis’ valiant attempt to sample every wine they managed to sample about 30% (about 50 wines). Then we had to get on the bikes and start peddling home. It would be interesting to know if we were above 0.05 . . . . I suspect that maybe Frank and Louis may have been.
Our destination was the nearest train station that could take us home, Traben-Trarbach, which was 20Km away. Apart from the last 5K or so that was along roads and road works the ride was beautiful. I
don’t know geographically how it happened but for quite a few Kms we were riding down a pretty steep grade – which is why I said at the start how grateful I was to Mandy to be able to work this out because going in the opposite direction would not have been fun at all. There are lots of bikes here that are fitted with small motors and I completely understand why.
I have said how steep the vineyards are and how they plant on every available place they can and it was really interesting to be so up close and personal to them as we were able to see some of the little mechanical monorail carts that they use to transport picked grapes in barrels down the slopes into the trucks and then take the empty ones back up again. It is clear that there is no obvious safety ropes or other mechanism for the pickers. It must just be such hard work.
After a 40Km bike ride we arrived at Traben-Trarbach where we boarded a small regional train which would take us back to a larger station and we could change trains
and get back to Cochem. On the regional train we travelled over this huge brick bridge which looked like an aqueduct and which took us through a large tunnel carved into a hillside. The Mosel was always to our left. I have to say by the time we got on to the train we were all pretty buggered and glad to be sitting down on a normal seat not a bike seat. All the stations are equipped with elevators so that you don’t have to carry your bikes up and down the stairs.
We arrived at Cochem about 6pm and decided to eat there rather than get to Ernst. Sadly this was a bit of mistake as the meal was pretty poor and pretty expensive and the waiter was rude. Shame really as it was a disappointing end to a fabulous day. The other thing I wasn’t really prepared for is the cash economy in regards to paying for meals. Before I left I had loaded up my meal entertainment card for reasons of budget and convenience and I can hardly use the bloody thing anywhere.
I needed to do some washing
and as there was no local Laundromat I had to do my washing in the bath. Its been a long time since I had to do that. I hung it out on the clothes horse in the hope that it would dry by tomorrow night. Needless to say we were all knackered, had showers and fell straight in to bed.
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