Rhineland Palatinate

The recent warm weather has meant that many of us are looking at old and new cycling areas. The Pfalz as the Germans call the Palatinate is a wine-, fruit- and vegetable growing paradise in south-eastern Germany. The local farmers have got together with the regional tourism authority to develop a new map that links the 1400km of cycling routes in the area between the French border in the south, Ludwigshafen in the northwest and Bad Dürkheim in the northeast with the farms offering direct sales of produce including wine. This coupled with the nearby cathedrals in Strasbourg, Worms, Speyer and Mainz, and Heidelberg just to the west means that this is an ideal holiday area both for families, and wine loving souls. Not that the presence of the former rules out the latter. The new map is called Radkarte Pfalz and can be obtained from Pfalz-Touristik, Martin Luther Strasse 69, D 67433 Neustadt/Weinstrasse, eMail info@pfalz-touristik.de. The web site is www.pfalz-radtouren.de.