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Today’s ride was 95 km from Treis-Karden to Bernkastel-Kues. It turned out a little further than we anticipated, due to the number of bends in the river.

It was overcast when we set out in the morning – with a gorgeous quality to the light. The Mosel was very still, throwing up reflections of the town as we crossed the bridge to ride on the other side.

We paused to watch this little narrow tractor riding up and down the steep slope and trimming the vines. Now we know why they all look so neat.

The biggest town we passed by was Cochem, about 12 km into our journey.

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It started to rain a little bit at Cochem. At first it was very light, barely making a difference, and later it set in to proper rain. It was not really cold and we were still able to enjoy the scenery.

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It only stopped raining around 15 km from our destination, after we had stopped for some refreshments. It took a while to find a local cafe that was open. I had Apfelstrudel and Kris and Esther had soup. You see Apfelstrudel advertised outside all the cafes – it seems to be the traditional cake in this part of the world, something I am very susceptible to.

Another wonder of the Mosel river valley is the size and height of some of the bridges spanning the valley. This bridge is so huge it was impossible to capture the whole thing in a photo.

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Bernkastel-Kues, our destination for the night, is a relatively large town, spanning both banks of the Mosel. It also has it’s own castle which overlooks the town. Our hotel is really close to the old town, and relatively expensive. We had to telephone someone and let ourselves in after taking a key out of a lock box using a code. The receptionist appeared later and helped us lock our bikes away in their garage.

It began to rain heavily just after we left the hotel on foot to get something to eat in town. We ended up in a small pizzeria eating an excellent Calzone pizza. It was starting to dry up again by the time we left and I took a few pictures of the beautiful old buildings in the town.

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We were lucky to reach the beautiful Mosel river in time to celebrate Kris’s birthday. We have toured through the Mosel river valley before, in 2015, and always vowed to return. This was Esther’s first visit and we enjoyed sharing it with her.

The day’s ride was just 55 km to Treis-Karen, the weather was sunny and we took a very relaxed pace. The first stretch was really easy – down the big hill we had climbed the night before and then into Koblenz, where we had a look around.

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A highlight of Koblenz is the Deutsches Eck (German corner). This is the confluence of the Rhine and the Mosel rivers. There is a huge statue and paved promenade, a cable car and a castle on the other side of the Rhine. A busker was playing the accordion as we enjoyed the scenery while riding around in circles on our bikes.

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The rest of the ride along the Mosel was idylic, as can be seen from the pictures below. The Mosel has the steepest vineyards in the world and is also dotted with castles and ruins. I tried to take a picture of each one.

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It became quite hot and we noticed a trend among male cyclists, namely cycling topless. Kris threw caution to the winds and followed their example – although he kept his helmet on!

Treis-Karden (our destination) is a neat small town on the river. Our accommodation was in a Pension right on the central square – above a bakery. Our rooms had a shared balcony looking out on the square.

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We had a walk around town and a beer at the beer garden down by the river. We decided to eat at Oscar’s burger cafe – next door to our Pension and owned by the same people. Here we also enjoyed some Riesling from the nearby Otto Knaup Vineyard. The burgers were special and the Riesling was wonderful.

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Today was our longest ride so far – 116 km from Cologne to Weitersburg. This was largely due to us underestimating the distance to the accommodation we had booked.

Almost the entire ride today was alongside the scenic Rhine river. It was not hard and we set off at a relaxed pace, not realising how long the day would be.

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We were charmed by the small town of Unkel, about half way into our ride.

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The last 20 km of the ride were hard. We were tired and Kris found the navigation to our accommodation tricky. We thought it would be straight forward when we booked the pension, as it was alongside the Rhine. But it turned out to be awkwardly situated in relation to the motorways and it was not easy to work out the best route with a bicycle. We stopped a couple of times for directions from people on the street. The last 2 km were up a steep hill – we actually walked some of the way.

We bought a heap of food and some red wine in the previous town and enjoyed it while recovering on the terrace outside our bedrooms, with the view of the Rhine below.

Today was a long 93 km, from Hagen to Cologne. The first part of the ride was messy and unpleasant – with no real bicycle path and busy traffic. We rode to Grevelsberg and Schwelm. From Schwelm, we had to traverse two river valleys, to Beyenberg. This involved a lot of hill climbing. It was hard work and our progress was slow.

Once we climbed the hill up past Beyenberg it was flat country. We got onto good bike paths from here (they may have been old railway tracks) and we began to make better progress. We stopped for a restorative coffee and cake at Lennep – and then made our way through Wermelskirchen and Burscheid. We got onto the Rhine just as we reached Cologne.

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We were exhausted when we arrived. Our hotel is near the centre so we went to see the Cathedral on foot and afterwards enjoyed a meal at a “Brauhaus” where we also had some of the traditional “Kolsch” beer – which is served ice cold in small 200 ml glasses.

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Today we rode 73 km from Soest to Hagen, with most of our ride along the Ruhr Valley Cycle Way. It was a cool day, with perfect conditions for cycling.

We started off on small roads and cycle paths, including a climb to ride up along a ridge, before Wickede. We could hear the church bells ringing in the valley down below. The view stretched out for many kilometres on either side. It looked quite industrial in the distance. We managed to keep a good distance from the very urban areas on our ride today. There was a wind farm along the ridge and we stopped at a bench made out of an old wind turbine generator. There was a display showing how much energy was being generated – around 600 kW

We found the RuhrtalRadweg (Ruhr Valley Cycle Way) soon after Frohnhausen and stayed on this route for the rest of our ride to Hagen

There were many other cyclists on this cycle path, most seemingly just out for a day ride on Sunday afternoon. One of them kindly took a photo of us on a bridge over the river.

The Ruhr cycle way was not alongside the river all the way. It occasionally veered away into towns or bits of forest or farmland in the river valley. We even found ourselves on a mountain bike track (maybe we were off the official path) – which ended up at this lovely beer garden above the river. We were only around 10 km from Hagen, so we stopped for a drink. Most of the people in the beer garden had arrived by bicycle.

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Hagen was a disappointment. We rode into the town but it was fairly dreary. So we headed to our accommodation around 3 km out of town near a university. The accommodation is great – large newly fitted out rooms. We thought the university may have an interesting buzz – but evidently it is an on-line university with almost no students on campus.

However there is an excellent beer garden and Argentinian restaurant very near to the hotel, where Esther treated us to a delicious meal

Today felt like a very long ride – 86 km without many stops – from Münster to Soest. We originally wanted to go to Dortmund, but couldn’t find reasonable accommodation there because of a Pokemon Go convention on the weekend!

We rode out of Münster on a “Bicycle Street” – where bicycles have priority, although cars and motorcycles can also ride through.

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We travelled along many small rural roads today – in some places it was so quiet it felt like we were the only people in the world.

The biggest town we passed through was Hamm, and I thought we may pause for a snack. However it was almost like a ghost town, and we kept going when we didn’t see anywhere appealing to stop.

This place was called Kirchwelver, and includes a church and cloister. It was very neat and picture perfect.

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We rode alongside more ripe wheat fields, some freshly cut fields, and today we also saw a couple of large noisy machines chewing the wheat up on one side and spitting out the chaff on the other.

Another feature of the ride was that the mosquitoes were out in force. All three of us were bitten while riding and were left scratching our arms and necks in the evening (and the next day).

We felt quite parched by the time we arrived in Soest, so we enjoyed a beer at one of the restaurants on the main square before heading out to our hotel.

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Our first tour day with Ester was around 67 km, from Osnabrück to Münster, including some time exploring the town before we went to our accommodation in a city apartment.

Elsbeth had made us aware that we are riding through the Teutoburg Forest area, where the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest took place in 9 CE. An alliance of Germanic tribes ambushed and decisively destroyed three Roman legions. The Romans never again attempted to conquer the Germanic territories east of the Rhine river, and this is regarded as a turning point in world history.

The Tautoburg Forest covers a large area and includes two nature reserves. However, I had my eye out for the name and picked up on it when we passed by a sign pointing to the Teutoburger Waldsee. We decided to do a short detour to see it. It was very peaceful, there were baby ducks.

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We found our way onto a bike path alongside the blue-green Dortmund-Ems Canal, around 15 km out of Münster. There was a lot of activity on the canal, with a number of barges going up and down, mostly carrying sand. We followed the canal almost the entire way into Münster

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I had read about Münster being the Bicycle Capital of Germany. Evidently vehicle traffic (36.4%) fell below traffic by bicycle (37.6%) in 2007.

We were not disappointed, as we rode through the centre of the city to the Schloss on a tree-lined bicycle only promenade. There were bicycles everywhere. Our impression was that there were more bicycles than cars around the centre of the city, and some of them were moving really fast. All the intersections are adapted for bicycle flow. We are not used to riding with so many other bicycles and had a couple of incidents where we inadvertently blocked the on-coming bicycle traffic by standing in the wrong place at the lights.

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Our accommodation is a central city apartment. We took the opportunity to make some food in the kitchen and relax in the hip living room. The downside was that the window in our bedroom was broken and couldn’t close, and it was also really noisy on the street below. Kris and I ended up dragging our mattress into the living room and sleeping on the floor for a quiet night.

Today we had a short ride, of just 44 km to Osnabrück, where we had arranged to meet up with Esther. Esther is our Swiss friend who will be joining our cycle tour for a couple of weeks.

It was another typical countryside ride, but with a few more hills.

We arrived in Osnabrück early and had a look around the city centre. It is quite large and prosperous with lots of pedestrian malls and cafes.

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We relaxed a bit in the hotel before going to meet Esther at the station in the evening. It was great to meet up again for the first time after our tour together in 2015.

Today’s ride felt long, at 84 km from Bucken to Haldem – it was also flat, so tiring on the arms and hands.

There was no fixed cycle route today. The Bicycle app and Google are unreliable in informing where dedicated bike paths actually exist, so our plan was fluid. We checked out at each turn off to see how things looked on the ground before proceeding. We started out following the L352 road. In one place the app indicated a bike path and we ended up riding with more traffic than was comfortable. In another it indicated no bike path and we found a very adequate tarred bike path separate to the road. After we passed south of Sulingen, we landed up in rural areas with lots of little narrow tarred roads – and quite a pleasant area for cycling.

We rode through many ripe wheat fields, some already harvested. There was quite a lot of rural activity around – tractors on the roads and cows in fields or munching hay in big barns. We saw wind turbines everywhere.

The surprise of the day was finding the Mühlenheider Museum of Wind Power, about 10 km from our final destination. We had some coffee and cake (for a donation – it is very low key and there is no real cafe) and had a good look at the historical wind turbine collection (from the 1980’s and 1990’s). Here is their web site:

http://www.muehlenheider-windkraftmuseum.de/English-Site/

Nineteen percent of German power is generated by wind with over 26,000 wind turbines.

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We struck it lucky with our accommodation today. It is a room with shared bathroom and access to a kitchen and living area. Except there are no other guests, so essentially we have the apartment to ourselves with a kitchen, dining room, living room and balcony. There is nothing much to see in the town – only a small shop where we bought food for our evening meal.

Our ride was 74 km from Soltau to Bucken. We had variable routes and bicycle paths that went back and forth between little towns and stretches of forest or farmland.

It was nice and cool again today – generally below 20 degrees. However we had some strong head and cross winds, which are still preferable to a heat wave.

We bought some raw milk cheese from a stall outside a farmyard at Walsrode. It had a fridge and also sold honey, sausages and preserves.

I love the look of the old farm houses in the little towns – all very well maintained. They are massive, with wood framed walls inter-laid with red bricks. I finally got a chance to stop and take some photos at a place called Böhme. There was also a display of old bee-hives – in woven baskets – in a cabinet on the street – I have only seen pictures of these in books before.

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We crossed the Weser river at Hoya, and from here it was not far to our hotel in Bucken.

Our hotel is great – we were upgraded from a double room to a huge two bedroom suite with a balcony and a massive bathroom (with two basins). I had to go and check with reception that there was no mistake and that we would still be charged the expected rate for a double room.