#53 Up the Rhine River

The start of my 2019 Grand European eBike Tour: a circular route of 3,500-km along the Danube and Elbe Rivers and through the Netherlands from north to south back to my starting point in Maastricht.  In this episode, I set off from Maastricht and cycle east across the Rhine and Main Rivers to Frankfurt and head south towards the Romantic Way and the Danube.

Meet Ziggy who is a contrarian, but otherwise dependable and strong in a brutish dumb beast kind of way.  Here, he is all kitted out for camping-style long distance touring.

 

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Sunday 21 April 2019.  Maastricht · Rheinbach |145 km|

We (that’s me and my bike Ziggy) set off from Molly’s house in Maastricht under clear blue skies at 7.00am.  It was quite crisp to begin with, around 1°C, but steadily climbed to the daily maximum of 24°.

Hmmm, I didn’t get far on the first attempt though; only as far as Gulpen, 14 km away, where I realised Ziggy was getting hysterical and couldn’t get me on to my pre-programmed track.  It was then that I discovered almost none of the regional maps I’d painstakingly loaded the previous night had in fact loaded.  Needing a network connection to sort that out, which was an iffy proposition heading onwards, it being early on a Sunday morning with no guarantees I would find a password-protected WIFI connection (the only kind Ziggy accepts), I turned around and begrudgingly peddled back to Maastricht to reload all the maps again.

It seems the maps didn’t open because they all (except for Ireland and parts of the UK) had “updates pending”.   That’s another rather weird little foible of the Bosch Nyon navigation system.  Ziggy freaks out if there are map updates available, and refuses to let you use the outdated ones.  Some liability issue, perhaps, if you crash following an out-of-date map and try to sue Bosch?

Underway again by 10am, I made good time of it through the suburbs of Aachen and on to Duren.  The intention was to head more-or-less directly on obscure bike paths to cross the Rhine and Moselle Rivers at Koblenz, since I’d already travelled up the Cologne-Koblenz section of the Rhine on the left bank before.  Then I’d go up-river for a short distance on the right bank, and hit out across-country again to reach the Main (pron. “Mine”) River near Wiesbaden.

This direct route turned out to be a bit of a waste of time really, as there were almost a 1,000 metres of climbing over rolling hills involved, and the scenery of open farmland was quite monotonous.  I stopped for a Radler (beer and lemonade) at a cute pub with stained glass windows.

I rolled into Rheinbach tired and quite late, and, after first trying a few completely unattended guesthouses and pensions, finally managed to gain access to a room at a hotel called the Streng attached to a Turkish restaurant.  To do this I had to call a number on the door and pay €45 by phone to obtain a code to open a key box.

Dinner I had at the busy outdoor terrace of Bauhaus Rheinbach, but it turned out to be an uninspiring overcooked lamb shank with beans and cheesy mash.  The couple of local beers I drank went down well though.

Monday 22 April 2019.  Rheinbach · Singhofen |119 km|

Unfettered by any pre-programmed route that I could come up with, Ziggy went completely mad today.  No hill was too steep, nor farmer’s track too rutted, nor view from a ridge-top wind turbine too unenthralling that he didn’t want to take me there.

A lot  of disagreements were had, but almost invariably my own instincts provided a better navigating solution to the one Ziggy suggested.  When I did try to program in a perfectly reasonable destination, such as Koblenz, his reaction was a typically Germanic “Impossible.  This destination cannot be reached”.

Luckily, I was fortified by an excellent €12 schnitzel lunch at Rheinufer, some 18 km before Koblenz, because it turned out to be another one of those 1,200m climbing afternoons, when I could just as easily have been enjoying a pleasant trip up the Rhine instead.

But that wasn’t the worst of it  – no sir.  Somewhere along the way the bright yellow waterproof bag containing my fancy new Hilleberg tent, veteran Thermarest pillow, brand new (unused) camera tripod and Hellinox light-weight folding chair bounced off the rear pannier rack when the bike’s stupidly-designed hold-down strap let go.  I don’t know how far back it happened, but the first I noticed was when the strap came completely off and whacked me in the back on a fast downhill section just past the village of Schweighausen.

I back-tracked to the village, where I spotted a family group having a BBQ in their courtyard.  They kindly drove me back 20 km to look for my lost bag but their car couldn’t go onto the rough track through the forest in the area of Frücht where it likely did fall off, and we never found it.  They gave me an el cheapo 3-person tent to be going on with instead, which I thought was very nice of them, and so on I soldiered.

It was already getting late so I used Ziggy’s destinations/ places of interest/ accommodation/ camp grounds menu to find me a camp for the night.  The place he suggested was a little off the beaten track and unattended, but I pitched tent on a grassed area next to a power socket anyway.  A weekend resident there, Thorsten, was quite friendly and deadlocked open the door to the ablutions for me to use during the whole night (just as well too), but due to the intense cold it was a largely sleepless night nevertheless.  Dinner was pasta with dried tomatoes and dried mushrooms, cooked on my tiny gas burner.

I duly went looking for the camp owner in the morning, and the old fellow was so pleased by my honesty he refused to take any payment.  The kindness of strangers, eh.

Tuesday 23 April 2019.  Singhofen · Frankfurt |110 km|

There was some steep climbing in the first 40 km after Singhofen – 1,200m  worth – then it was downhill into Wiesbaden, which is quite a big (and prosperous-looking) city and has a large ERGO camping and adventure store.  There, I replaced my lost gear with a cheapish (€269) MSR “Elixir 2” 2-person tent (identical to the one I own back in Australia, actually), a Thermarest pillow and a Helinox chair.  I’m proud of myself for economizing on the tent – an equivalent replacement Hilleberg would have cost close to €1,000, for a weight saving of about 2 kg.  Mind you, weight is important on a bike trip.

Back on the road again after my lengthy stay in Wiesbaden, it was overland once again to meet up with the River Main and head on in to Frankfurt.

Bird viewing seems to be a national pastime in these parts, judging by the vast numbers of bird hides that I saw.

Not much chance of finding a Camping Platz in Frankfurt, I figured, so I just made the lame choice of the Ibis hotel in the financial district.  It was a little expensive for my tastes, but good value at €77 (plus, unfortunately, €12 for breakfast, which was not good value).  Dinner was again a very nice Schnitzel, that I had at an outside eatery in the Altstad, accompanied by a few glasses of Apfel Wein, which is very nice but a bit like flat apple cider.

It was a case of good cop/ bad cop at the reception desk, which I found quite funny.  The guy who checked me in was the good cop – said it was advisable to park my bike in the underground garage (which I did, but had to lug my luggage up two flights to the ground-floor lift) and gave me a special ‘business’ WIFI connection so that Ziggy could get on too and download his experiences to my computer.  I tried to politely tell his bad cop buddy on the morning shift that the customers would burn their hand on the serving spoon in the bacon dish, but of course it was all my fault, and he had to instruct me on the correct use of spoons (burning his fingers in the process, haha).  Then he demanded €15 from me to get my bike out of the car park.  This I loudly refused.  So he pettily exacted revenge by ‘misunderstanding’ and refusing to open the remotely-controlled garage door for me.  I had to scoot back down the ramp, leaving my fully loaded bike precariously balanced at the top, up the basement steps again, duck back past reception, head out the front door and go down the parking ramp to open the garage door from the outside with the entry button there.  The prick!

Wednesday 24 April 2019.  Frankfurt · Miltenburg |110 km|

Another dry day, but the sky was starting to cloud over now, earlier each day, so I knew rain couldn’t be too far away.  I was bitterly disappointed to come across a great-looking Camping Platz beside the river bike path only 12 km out of Frankfurt – but what the hey, them’s the breaks!

Just out of Frankfurt, I came across Jorge, who’s cycling from Spain to North Cape!  And further along I met up with Carlos “the chocolate man”.   Now get this: he’s taking 13kg of chocolate on his bike from Amsterdam to Munich.  The chocolate is grown in Jamaica and brought over to Amsterdam in a sailboat twice a year, and twice a year 150 cyclists work in relays to ferry it all over Germany.  Get it? – planet-saving, sustainable, emission-free chocolate!  It’s called the “Schokofahrt” and if you can read German you’ll find out all about it here

I politely ventured that it must take a lot of resources to organize, transport, accommodate and feed 150 cyclists, and he responded that “what we’re doing is “symbolic””.  Oh well, I’ve got no problem with all these people enjoying themselves out there riding along with a whole lot of melting chocolate on board, but if they seriously think their efforts are addressing any of the world’s problems, well….they’re idiots, frankly.  It’s just so wrong on so many different levels.

Back to me, though, I probably should have followed my original plan and made for Würzburg, but Ziggy had a better idea and suggested we follow the Main River only as far as Aschaffenburg instead, then cut off south in the direction of Miltenburg  to get onto the Romantiche Strasse at Rothenburg op der Tauber.  So that’s what I did, and we were both wrong!

I very stupidly didn’t look at a map (I didn’t have a map!) – the Main River basically misses Aschaffenburg and dips south to Miltenburg anyway.  At Ziggy’s suggestion, I took the overland route instead – through Aschaffenburg, Mespelbrunn, Heim-buchenthal, Dammbach, Eschau, Mönchberg, Röllbach and Großheubach to reach Miltenburg: all fairly non-descript places (except for Aschaffenburg) and with no discernable bike path to follow (though the roads were generally quiet).  What a chore that all was!

Ziggy really made a mess of it today and I had quite a few rude remarks to make about his (lack of) navigating skills.  My wobbly track over hill and dale says it all.  Following the river would have been far simpler, and probably more rewarding.

Anyway,  I got into Miltenburg in good time and set up camp in the local Camping Platz for €12.  I was well settled-in nicely in my fully-secured brand new tent, enjoying a beer or two after my standard pasta with tomato, mushroom and tuna camp meal, when a vicious gale struck from the west without warning.  Perfect timing!  Hardly any rain, but an hour of gale force winds gusting up to 70kph.  It destroyed a couple of caravan annexes next to me but my tent stood firm.  I was very proud of it, and now have great confidence going forward that it will look after me.

-ends-

#54.  Europe 2019.  Maastricht to Miltenburg.  492 km in 4 days.