The hire bike problem

We are in the middle of our once a decade chuck out of pamphlets and paper. The danger is that one stops to read the stuff that is being thrown out and then you are doomed. However I found a piece of literature today that it struck could be an answer to the hire problem. BikePoint in Frankfurt, a bike workshop offering employment for the young longterm unemployed sells general reconditioned bikes for between 30€ and 200€. If you are going to do a longish tour - the Danube for example, you could set off from Frankfurt, cycle to Donaueschingen on to the Black Sea and leave the bike there. Then come back without worrying about finding a train to bring you and your steed back.The advantage over a hire bike is that you don't have to return to Mainhattan to return the bike.

Back on the bikes again

This is a article written by Judith earlier in the year that had got mislaid.
Our increasingly oppressive summer temperatures have been followed by cold, snowy winters with roads and pavements left as icy skid pans for weeks at a time. Finally spring seems well on the way and we’ve dusted off most of our bikes and pumped up the tyres. Our trusty Bromptons get used almost everyday as soon as the ice melts, for shopping trips or local errands, but those for longer trips take a winter break. Then we start to re-explore our local woods and trails across the fields, gradually extending our range ready for touring. Even to ourselves we do not usually admit this is to check whether we can still ride or whether our ageing joints have finally seized up, more proposing a trip to buy an English paper or to collect compost by trailer. A longer tour had to be postponed when the ‘workmen’ at last decided that temperatures were warm enough to renovate and seal the join between house and terrace - a long and tiresome saga.
That completed, we were free to think about continuing our journey along the Rhine, upstream from where we abandoned it after being washed out in autumn deluges. We decided to continue our training programme with the Worms to Ludwigshafen section, which we could do from home.
In the Viernheim woods only the merest suspicion of spring greens could be glimpsed and the Spargel (asparagus) fields of Lampertheim to the northwest were fully shrouded in black plastic. There were no headscarfed figures bent double, wielding their sharp knives to liberate the ‘queen of vegetables’ and we had the quiet roads almost to ourselves. The sun was shining and the hills either side the Rhine Rift Valley clearly outlined against a deepening blue sky. Worms, with its bridge tower and the prongs of its cathedral drew nearer to the northwest. We negotiated the bends and ramps of the cycle/footway over the new road bridge and paused to check the progress on rebuilding the old bridge with the massive and photogenic bridge tower. Once customs were levied here on goods crossing the Rhine from one statelet to another. Winter high water probably slowed work but there were men dangling over the water, scaffolding and machines buzzing on the embankment.
Mothers with young families and the usual gaggle of pensioners were checking on the landing stage and the restaurants on the Rheinland-Pfalz shore, the left bank of the river.
We steered our 20 inch Dahon folders under the bridge and south, through a cluster of old pumping station and market buildings, now evidently occupied by some metal-working activity. Soon we were bowling along the high water embankment, past fields and old orchards with black thorn and cherry trees dwarfed by ancient willows and alders along the river. Around a corner suddenly we came across a large industrial complex, complete with delivery trucks, seemingly producing car body parts. We were quickly back into a rural landscape, sometimes close to the Rhine, sometimes separated by a couple of fields and occasionally the cycle way swung us alongside the B9, a north/south major highway. It was noisy for a few minutes and then our trusty Rhine cycleway golden man sign pointed us back riverwards.
On the Rhine itself, the upturn in industrial output is clearly noticeable in more shipping, carrying sand and gravel, oil, LPG gas, also Mercedes truck units and John Deere agricultural vehicles. The Ro-Ro container port south of Mannheim also probably loaded some of the container barges we saw.
After crossing under the Autobahn bridge we found a bench to eat our sandwiches while watching volunteers from the Pfalzerwald walking club tidy up their clubhouse for the spring. They seemed to have a major mole infestation in the picnic area. There is a walkway/cycleway in the middle of the Autobahn bridge, but it is a breathless climb up several flights of steps inside the bridge abutments. The ride across the bridge is not for the faint-hearted, though there are big concrete slabs separating you from the traffic.
However we wended our way south into Ludwigshafen and found the new Rhein Gallerie shopping area which has opened up a stretch of the Rhine bank formerly occupied by warehouses allowing good views of Mannheim. There is a Migros, the Swiss supermarket, there, but we decided to press on and cross the Rhine into Mannheim to cycle back to Viernheim on familiar trails.

Into the green jungle

In the depths of winter, our town environmental officer asked me to plan a ‘Nature Tour’ around the town. I agreed, May or June 2011 seeming very far away and under the impression the tour was for a group of interested but ‘ordinary’ citizens. Suddenly the time is near and the group has evolved into local bigwigs, who may know far more than me. Fortunately we met up by bicycle with some real experts last week and set off on little used trails along the town boundary. Viernheim occupies a relatively tiny area, bounded on three sides by another state and I wanted to stay in Hesse on the tour. Almost immediately we were in a quiet world of mixed woodland running below the crest of Viernheim’s relict sand dunes (dating from the last ice age). A bird trilled off to our right and Dr. D, our guide, identified it as a nightingale, the first I had knowingly heard. We progressed along the edge of a newish golf course, laid out against considerable local opposition but whose margins now provided habitats for various relatively rare plants and orchids with attendant insects including several butterflies. Deeper into the woodland which includes Scots pine and many species like sweet chestnuts and North American wild cherries that have been sown by birds rather than the foresters, we were in a shady cool jungle. Another bird call was identified as a wryneck, a small woodpecker-like bird that is shy and rarely seen. I looked it up later in a bird book and it is a tawny brown with a few stripey bits, certainly not easy to spot flitting about in woodland. We reached the old boundary road, a sand and gravel route along the crest of the old dunes, still in Hesse but with Baden Württemberg on our left. In a Federal country, such as Germany, this is important since many environmental and educational activities may vary and be differently funded in each state.
After a short distance one of our companions became very agitated as we passed recent and ongoing forestry activities. Although certain parts of the old sand dune system are officially protected areas and the whole region is part of an extensive water gathering ground, forests have to pay their way and be managed. Certainly the timber extraction, ploughing and subsequent replanting with deciduous trees has apparently damaged the landscape irreparably, (Photo bottom) but as long as the young trees can survive the current 8-week drought, I expect all will be well in about 5 years. Our Nature Friends have a duty to check excess exploitation and to aid landscape and species protection, but I think this is something I would want to play down on a tour with local politicians.
We continued, leaving the sandy trails behind and enjoyed the vast number of greens and browns of the woods, the cries and occasional glimpses of buzzards reminding us that nature, left to itself is a battleground for survival. Our route turned right, over a bridge across the Autobahn, another interruption, another boundary for sure, but also the edges make good hunting grounds for kestrels and living spaces for mice and other small species that are their food. Partly because the forest must be managed, there are bridges and wide access to the woods intersected by major rail and road links. The woods ended suddenly at a wide blaze. Along the centre march electricity pylons, then a major gas pipeline and then a dead straight gravel road before the trees begin again on the northern side. The road replaced the rail link to Lampertheim and was for many years used for tank driving between various US bases nearby. It is known as the Panzerstrasse (tank road, photo middle. Warning notices are still located at the ends and many military vehicles use the road to access shooting ranges nearby. The foresters say that there is disturbance to wildlife, particularly from noise and dust but relations between the civil and military authorities are generally good. Along this road and many of the gravel trails are rectangular, clay lined hollows every hundred metres or so. When it rains they fill with water for wild pig, deer and other creatures. That day we met a forester underway with a tank full of water, for in the forest on our left, unseen to us were ‘nests’ of young pigs, watched over by their mothers. They use the hollows gouged out by the US tanks now reclaimed by grass and bushes as good spots to shelter on hot days. When we redid the route the following day some of the water dips were lined with tiny and big hoof prints. A lack of predators and plenty of food has led to a wild pig population explosion, here and throughout Germany.
We followed the tank road back towards town and then turned off through the allotments, a riot of rose blossom and suspiciously green grass. The neat little houses are very unlike the tumbledown, makeshift sheds most Brits equate with allotments. Nearby is a small lake, complete with wild fowl, permanent inhabitants or just passing through. Beyond the allotments we sped off on a rough track, over tree roots and mixed woodland to the base of a ‘hill‘ adjacent to our town compost and domestic waste recycling depot. The hill is man made, the sealed and planted remains of the waste landfill site (Photo top). There are no convenient holes in the ground here in the Rhine Valley, so before more domestic waste was converted into power by incineration, artificial hills were created. This mound is now the highest point in Viernheim, some 11 metres higher than the ice age sand dunes over to the southwest. We braved attack by ticks to reach the new viewpoint, with 360 degree panorama over the Rhine Rift Valley and its eastern faulted edge of the Odenwald. Up to now our Nature Tour had been mostly concerned with micro landforms, flora and fauna but George Everest would probably have appreciated our glimpse of Southern Germany’s 200+km long macro landform. We had been away from home about 2 hours and returned home, windblown and slightly sunburnt, well pleased with our new discoveries.

You know you're a touring cyclist when

you eat a picnic with your cycling gloves on.

Hallelujah!

Amazing the title is spelled correctly.
We have finally delivered almost all of the AtoB Guide about putting your bike on a train in Europe, well actually Europe without the UK, fourteen countries in all. We still need to look at eastern Europe, but it's summer and we can go cycling.
This is a kind of Twitter blog, short and sweet. Our wine merchants and grocers to the carriage trade, ALDI Süd are offering bikes next week: 28" trekking bikes for 229€. We are ourselves will not buy Aldi bikes, not because they are not well equipped and cheap. ALDI has found the secret of offering good quality, low priced items. However many German bike shops will not repair them. However for a month's trip these would be cheaper than flying them in from the USA or hiring, even if you left them at the airport when you departed these shores. Problem is they are only on sale next week.

Events

Last Sunday the Kurpfalz was home to the three mass cycling events: Car free days on the Bergstraße and on the B9 between Worms and Oppenheim, and the BASF Cycle Tour through parts of South Hessen, North Baden and Rhineland Palatinate. The Germany may not be as active as the Dutch when it comes to daily cycling, but in leisure events they are world beaters. All three events were well visited in spite of the weather - cold and damp.

Bike Hire in Heidelberg and Weinheim

Vbl Heidelberg is a project to offer employment and training to disabled people, long term unemployed and as the Germans say, people with a migration background, i.e. foreigners. The latter have difficulty in getting jobs because often their German is perceived to be bad. One of the activities of this organisation is in the bike business. The company offers bikes for hire from 6€ a day to 30€ a week. These are reconditioned touring and trekking bikes with gears and lock, fitted with a basket. The address in Heidelberg: Bike im Bahnhof, Hauptbahnhof Heidelberg/Platform 1 b. Tel: +49 (0)6221 8 93 73 45, eMail: bikeimbahnhof@vbi-heidelberg.de. The address in Weinheim is: Bike im Bahnhof, Am Hauptbahnhof 1, 69469 Weinheim, Tel: 06201/2 55 69 53. Both workshops are on the main railway station in the two cities.

If you need a bike for a week or two in northern Baden-Württemberg or Southern Hessen, these are good people to hire from. The prices are very fair. The bikes are in good nick. You are helping with the recycling of bicycles. You're helping others get desperately needed training that will help them get out of the unemployment trap. It is a win win situation and you can fit your helmet over your halo!

Budget Eating in Europe

It has happened to most of us despite our good intentions and rapid forays into bakeries or stores before we leave the railhead, it pours with rain, the temperature plunges and the picnic on the trail is just going to be miserable. Or it can be that you simply have no food with you. In the UK we know that Garden Centres often incorporate excellent cafes and are located on the edges of towns. Reading through various cycling publications makes it clear that these are a boon to the cycling fraternity, since many older teashops have disappeared.
In Germany we’ve found that many supermarkets boast both bakeries and coffee shops, with savoury snacks and all manner of cakes. Discounters and similar outlets have sprung up here too, often on the margins of towns or marked by their signs and flags visible from the cycleway along the river or canal. Well-known furniture stores and other emporia have cafeterias, open from morning until 7 or 8 pm, which offer a great range of dishes, hot and cold, with salad and fruit options to suit almost every taste. OK it is NOT Haute Cuisine, but it is certainly not chips with everything or even ‘portion control’. Prices for a main dish will range from 7-10€, whilst drinks range from about 2.50€ for a normal coffee to a little more for the exotic variety. Beer or wine too, if you fancy them, but don’t forget a bike is a road vehicle like a car and 0.5 is the limit.
Leave your bikes outside, well locked up in the racks and grab a shopping trolley to stick your panniers in and take it with you, there are usually parking areas around the seats. No one will bat an eyelid if you are in complete ‘Tour de France’ gear or in T-shirt and your Dad’s old plus fours. We saw a young man, black singlet, baggy trousers and bare feet sipping a coffee shop latte a few weeks ago, when there was snow on the ground and the temperature close to 0 C. Chacun a son gout and why not!
Within shopping malls there is a choice of many eating styles and foods, some where you stand or perch, where you can have assembled a rocket sized baguette of this or that, collect a great hunk of tasty pizza, plus the usual fast food eateries we know and love or dislike. It will be warm or air conditioned cool inside, usually dry apart from the odd fountain and much more comfortable than the alternative bus shelter or overhanging eave of a barn and its nearby dung heap. It won’t break the bank either. If you are really not keen on waste you can eat your picnic in the evening, as long as your sandwich is well protected from the downpour. We know, we have done all of these things.
We have eaten in the Co-op and Migros chains in Switzerland, where the Swiss Franc goes further and in many French shopping complexes. With what you save you can afford a special meal, candlelight tete a tete, plus the local tipple later on in the trip. A recent feast in Tounus, Burgundy (Bresse chicken pate in pastry, roast hare, and a lemon dessert, plus several little appetisers) was truly delicious but the cost somewhat eye-watering!
Hospitals (Krankenhäusen or Klinik) too are often outside towns and have eating places open to the public, probably intended to mean patients and visitors, but we do know people who eat in hospital cafeterias at least once a week. Many staff and visitors cycle to hospitals here, wearing cycling clothing...so there really is no choice between freezing to death under a hedge at lunchtime or parking your bike and finding the hospital cafe. The hospital folks might get a bit upset if a huge party of tourers appeared, but a friendly group of four or so would be unlikely to be noticed.

The Royal Wedding

You may well ask yourself what the wedding of Kate Middleton and William Windsor has to do with cycle touring? Unfortunately unbeknown to the British Crown, Spezi, Europe's biggest and best, probably only special cycle exhibition will be held in Germersheim, Rheinland Pfalz near Speyer on April 30 and May 1 this year. It's the mecca for folding bikes, trikes, tandems and work bikes in western Europe. You could use the bank holiday to nip over to drool over some lovely hardware, meet interesting people (me and her) and taste the local wines and beers.

New Trends in Local Cycling

Similarly to the pothole service offered nationally in the UK by the CTC, German cities offer reporting services to let cyclists tell the appropriate authorities when a road or cycle path is blocked by rubbish or needs repairing. In Mannheim the city council offers a cyclists' hotline. Across the river in Rheinland-Pfalz Speyer and Worms have volunteers as interface to the various departments. The more rural counties in the Rhein-Neckar metropolitan area have yet to create these positions or find a volunteer, but according to the Südhessen Morgen of 11th March 2011 moves are afoot to increase the importance of cycling as a means of commuting and some mechanism will be set up to allow cyclists to report deficiencies. This all to the good, especially when cyclists use the hotlines to report deficiencies rather than moaning on Stammtische as they are given to do.

You know you're a touring cyclist when

you judge restaurants on the quality of the paper serviettes to clean your bike!

Is it a wise decision?

We read the SMo (Südhessen Morgen) newspaper every day and I was amused recently to read recently that the popularity of that cycle touring holidays is growing and shortly afterwards that the new double deck long distance trains ordered by German Railways for delivery in 2013 will have capacity for 10 bicycles. The ADFC, the German cycling club pointed out that this less than the 16 places the present generation of single deck InterCity trains offer. One does wonder at times whether German Railway's prejudice against bicycles will not cost them customers in future?

Bicycle Museums Part III

The Musée de l’Aventure Peugeot (Peugeot Museum of Adventure) in Sochaux in the Doubs Valley near Montbelliard obviously shows a lot of motor cars, but also has 300 bicycles, scooters, mopeds and motorcycles in the museum's collection of which about 130 are shown at any one time. It also has a good collection of pepper mills and coffee grinders. Peugeot built pepper mills, coffee grinders and bicycles before branching out into motorcycles and cars

Bicycle Museums Part II

From what I can gather the only bicycle museum in the Netherlands is the Velorama in Nijmegen. It has 250 bicycles including a hobby horse from 1817 or a replica of it. The museum is well worth visiting if only see the photograph of Queen Wilhelmina on her bicycle with the royal bicycle on display. What impressed me as well was the realisation that many of the features of the modern bicycle: gearing, springing and folding appeared very early on, but were not taken up.

Bicycle Museums Part I

A bicycle collector friend of ours, (A bicycle collector is defined as someone who has more bicycles than me.) sent me a link recently to
http://bsamuseum.wordpress.com/1911-bianchi-military-folding-bicycle/ which is not a museum in the usual sense of the word but an archive. We received this when we returned from a cycling holiday in Tournus, Burgundy. The town has a bicycle museum. We did not know this before we went and unfortunately found out about the place after it closed for the winter(http://www.enviesdevelo.com in French). It is open for individuals from Easter until All Saints Day (November 1st), but groups can visit the whole year round by appointment. Obviously we did not visit the museum but the next time we are travelling through the area we will try to stop in or near Tournus and visit it. It struck us that we could well try to set up a list of bicycle museums and or museums with bicycles to add interest to cycle tours and or provide suggestions for somewhere to shelter when the weather is wet rather than the usual bus shelter. So watch this space.

A rant about the Rhine cycleway

Apologies, but it needs to be said. The Rhine is the third or fourth most popular cycle route in Germany, in spite of the efforts of the provincial, local and probably national governments. The Cycleway has four or five names each with its own symbols: On Lake Constance it is the Bodensee Cycleway; Between Constance and Basel it is the Hochrhein Cycleway. In Basel the route becomes the Rhine Cycleway up to Remagen where it changes its name to the Erlebnisweg Radschiene. Then after Düsseldorf (plus minus) it swops to the Rhine Cycleway again, don't ask me why.

Once it crosses over the border into the Netherlands the route as such disappears. The Rhine gets another name. It is not critical in the Netherlands as the excellent Knooppunt system allows easy navigation. See http://www.fietsnet.be/routeplanner/default.aspx which shows an example in Flemish about Belgium where the same system is used. Life would be a lot a better if the Germans could adopt this system of navigation. It is ironic that this will probably not occur because of the problems of interprovincial cooperation, because this system was invented by a German mining engineer in the mines around Maastricht.

At the Travel Show Part 3

Eurovelo Routes
Remembering a pioneering bike tour we’d made from Mannheim to Orange (Rhone Valley) in our early days of cumbersome bikes, primitive panniers and quick to wet but slow to dry cotton clothing, we homed in on the Franche-Comté stand, to see what was new. Nantes to Budapest, Eurovelo Route 6 or the Atlantic to the Black Sea (4446 km) runs right through Franche-Comté (F-C). We had found our first (to us) new bike trail. The department of F-C lies south of Lorraine and Alsace, bordering the Rhine close to Basel, then running into the Jura hills along the Swiss border. When we rode through from Mulhouse to Belfort, Montbéliard and along the R. Doubs both cycleways and signposts were few. We made our own tour using the numerous D roads through wooded hills, sleepy villages and towns. The Doubs canal towpath boasted the usual French ‘c’est interdit...’ signs but as all the locals ignored them, we did too. It was not always easy to find places to stay, but we enjoyed the great variety of beds and the memorable notice in one hotel ‘in case of fire, open the window and make yourself known’. Fortunately the night’s worst problem was a violently sloping bed so the uphill body slipped down, the lower sleeper woke up, then walked round to the upper level to take their revenge. We ate wonderful meals, usually choosing the mid-priced menu and didn’t worry too much about what the collection of small birds on our plates had been when alive. We saw hardly any other touring cyclists and only had to joust with French camions for short distances. The Doubs is the rather strange river we had last seen whilst riding in the Swiss Jura, where it flows northeastwards through Pontarlier. As the Jura hills were folded along a NE-SW axis the river cut across the line of the folds in deep gorges until finally by Montbéliard it swung again to flow southwest, eventually into Rhone tributary, the Saone. The booklet we picked up covers the section from Dole to Belfort (187 km) and has detailed maps with information in French, English and German about things to see (lots), tourist offices, bike shops, restaurants, cyclist wardens as well as museums. The cyclist wardens, Velo guards are dressed in red and their aim is to offer assistance, first aid and advice rather than to act as police it seems. The information indicates that certain sections along waterways or by slopes can be hazardous, to careless riders. An accommodation list covers groups as well as individuals. It appears that almost the entire route is traffic free, well-surfaced and ‘signalized’ or signposted we would say. In cities like Montbéliard main roads need to be crossed with care, one section beyond Dole towards the Saone was still provisional in August 2010. Reading the information and looking at the maps suggests that the delightful, varied cities and landscapes along our old route are now accessible to the cyclist with less of the pioneering spirit needed. No doubt the ‘interdit’ signs have vanished too! Check out www:franche-comte.org

What about the rest of the route?
A useful website is http://www.eurovelo6.org/ which has practical details concerning travel and visa requirements. It also suggests that the whole route is complete, though whether this means all the signposts are in place is debatable. The initiative for these routes came from umbrella organisation European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF). This is consists of representatives from national cycling clubs from inside and outside the EU. It aims both to represent cyclists’ interests generally and to lobby for improvements in cycle routes and improved safety for people on bikes. It may have a better chance of attracting funds designed to increase bike riding in towns and other ‘green’ transport initiatives, e.g. in 2008 the EU transport committee agreed a grant of €300 000 to this end, so not peanuts! The various Eurovelo routes link existing cycle ways and to qualify have to pass through at least two countries. Find more information by typing Eurovelo into a search engine. The websites suggest that 12 routes are at least partially complete, athough some seem to have few real grounds for hanging together. Cycling along many parts of any of them is interesting as we know (largely by chance, e.g. Andermatt to Rotterdam). Within the UK we know that there is interest in that part of the North Sea route (Eurovelo 12) which runs along the island’s east coast and continues after a sea break in the Shetland Islands. However, perhaps Eurovelo 5, London to Brindisi (3900 km) might lack a defining raison d’etre?

At the Travel Show Part 2

Many German cities like Frankfurt, Leipzig or Cologne have huge, purpose built exhibition halls for trade fairs or shows that are held regularly like the Book Fair in Frankfurt. In Cologne the RDA Workshop ‘only’ occupied two floors of one of the halls, but we entered via another, up imposing steps then over shiny granite floors through empty enormous spaces out into courtyards. Finally we reached the RDA building, completed the formalities and suitably identified with badges, descended onto the floor. The giant space before us was filled with a multitude of stands, information leaflets by the million and, this being Germany lots of people in Tracht (traditional dress - Lederhosen and Dirndls were favourite). He who hesitates in a trade fair ends up with aching feet and armfuls of irrelevant bumf, so we pushed on, heads up to find the Romantic Road stand first. Our cycling guide to this route from Würzburg to Füssen is being updated and revised (see www.bergstrassebikebooks.com for details) so we were anxious to check in with Jürgen Wünschenmeyer, the CEO of the Touristik-Arbeitsgemeinschaft-Romantische Strasse to hear how signposting of a few minor route changes was progressing. A mixed message, some good some bad news, which is not unusual with individual towns being responsible for local stretches. Some eMails and letters have since been fired off to encourage action.
However, working nearby were staff from both Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Augsburg, both stopping points along the approximately 450 km Romantic Road cycle route. One of our latest ventures is to whet potential cyclists’ appetites by publicising the many networks of local and regional cycleways around the towns between Würzburg and Füssen. Some of these are easy to find on the web and are partly or wholly in English. Others are obscure. Knowing that cyclists could spend a few days exploring well-signposted routes from a base in Augsburg or the Pfaffenwinkel villages we think may appeal to those who don’t want to pack up and move on each day. The Rothenburg odT connection had to admit that they were working on the idea, possibly for next year, whilst the Augsburg folks have promised us some more definite information. Within 30 minutes our meetings had achieved results that would have taken far longer with phone, fax or internet.
Now we had time and interest in making a few more connections and discoveries about cycling possibilities in other parts of Europe. Our feet were still fresh and fragrant, our rucksacks ready to gobble maps and cycling information.
Useful websites: www.romantischestrasse.de and www.romantic-road-coach.de

Transport Show in Cologne Part 1

On July 28 we visited the RDA Workshop in Cologne, Germany. We travelled by train and had the first interest of the day as we waited in Mannheim for our Intercity northwards. A long train en route for Basel drew in across the platform and the last two carriages had strikingly different liveries. They turned out to be the Minsk-Basel and Moscow-Basel sleepers. Although in summer we would not have expected bits of snow encrusted here and there, we later heard reports of searing temperatures and forest fires among Russia’s forests so perhaps there had been a few whiffs of singed paint work. From one of the carriages a party clearly wearing Eastern European fashions, stepped out, then shook hands with a large jolly blonde woman, as we tried in vain to catch a glimpse of a samovar within. Mannheim railway station, a prosaic workaday place disappeared as Anna Karenina, steppe and taiga seeped from films and books into our mind’s eye. Then the doors slammed, Minsk and Mocba disappeared down the track towards Basel and Switzerland.
Our journey to Cologne was protracted by technical problems, the wrong sort of rain or a landslide or two so after a cup of dreadful DB coffee we returned to thinking of Russian trains. It had always been possible to get to Russia by train from hereabouts, even with the Iron Curtain still in place. Commuting daily from Weinheim to Frankfurt in the early nineteen nineties Neil had occasionally observed dark green, very old-fashioned rolling stock three times a week, which linked Berne with Moscow. It was an interesting, though not a particularly enticing, thought at the time, with the hostile wastelands of East Germany and Poland to cross. To us island born Cold War children it also hinted at romance and impossible distances. Imagine an Edinburgh to Istanbul Express stopping at Wigan North West!
You could easily get a couple of Bromptons in those wagons we thought, even if carriage of bicycles is officially forbidden. One of our minor forms of what some cyclists call ‘soft anarchy’ is to quietly travel with a bike in a bag on some of Europe’s more exclusive trains. Does one still need a visa for Moscow or Minsk, and where on earth exactly IS Minsk? (Capital of Belarus, some distance west of Moscow itself.) Research has revealed that just boarding the train and hoping to set off in either place for the other by bike isn’t that easy since many travel restrictions still exist and individual journeys by cyclists are regarded by the authorities as dangerously eccentric at the least.
However we were on our way to a Workshop, aka Trade Fair about bus and group travel but with increasing interest in cyclists. Who knew what ideas and information, what routes and fantasies, we would have by the late afternoon?

From Riesling to Pike-Perch

New cycling routes tend to spring up in Germany rather like unwanted garden weeds, so after reading in our local paper about a route combining wine and fish eating we decided to hop on bikes and trains and investigate. The von Riesling zum Zander route links Bad Bergzabern (a well known wine centre on the far west of the Rhine Rift Valley) with Neupotz, a tiny village set in the old ox-bow lakes of the Rhine. Our train journey there was enlivened by many Sunday cyclists crowding the bike compartment, plus a young father and daughter (about 9) with bikes and a huge trailer. By squeezing and breathing in everyone managed to get in AND more importantly get out at the correct stops. The worst weeks of the heat wave (36°C) lay behind us and we detrained into a sunny but cool morning in Kapellen-Drusweiler, one of the wine-growing villages a few kilometres east of Bad Bergzaben. We were a bit early for a Schoppen (a small glass) of wine, though the vintners were setting out their stalls by 11 o’clock. Their half-timbered yards bedecked with geraniums and petunias were most inviting, prices too much lower than in downtown Mannheim. The Riesling-Zander route links a series of existing cycle routes and we had no difficulty following the white signs with a green bike symbol from village to village. We had downloaded a map from the internet link before leaving home. On reaching the little town of Winden, thoughts of a coffee and cake lured us into a shady courtyard. At the entrance a man wearing a protective apron was just removing the first freshly smoked trout from a large black oven, the fish dangling on wooden staves, skins glistening and golden. Cake was abandoned, a smoked trout brötchen (open sandwich) ordered instead with our coffee. Quite delicious. Later the fish farmer explained that he came from Hinterweidenthal close to Pirmasens further west. Another of our favourite bike routes runs from there to Wissembourg in Alsace, so we’ll remember to eat smoked trout on our next visit.
More cyclists were appearing so we continued on across a gradually changing landscape, up and down gentle slopes, through stands of mature trees, leaving the line of the Pfalzer hills behind to the west. Each village was delightful, a few cobbled streets, farms and churches dozing in the sun, half-timbered houses more than 300 years old with new modern dwellings dotted in between and on the outskirts. Steinweiler offered more vintners and a maize labyrinth whilst in Erlenbach we enjoyed a cool mineral water at a potter’s shop without too much pressure to buy a giant plant pot. From time to time there was a glimpse over the forests close to the Rhine to the northern Black Forest hills beyond, dark blue shading into black.
We cycled into the long village of Rheinzabern, where the tiny houses have their gable ends to the street and long gardens at the back. Here we were enticed into a wonderland leading from a narrow yard between two restored half-timbered cottages. A series of outdoor rooms, a la Chelsea Flower Show had been created with flowers and bushes whilst behind a planted screen a round table had been set for tea. Most impressive, since it is still unusual for people to open their private gardens to the public here in Germany, though it seems to be catching on in nearby Alsace. Across the road was another delight where a farming family had turned their stables into a collection of implements and carts, together with clothing and articles in daily use from the beginning of the last century. It does come as something of a shock to see things my Grandmother used to have, in a museum! Tempus Fugit, once again.
By this time, the effects of our fish sandwich in Winder had long since worn off so we were pleased to reach Neupotz and signs to the Otterbachhofladen (an enormous timber framework barn, set out with long tables, decorated with bundles of wheat and wild flowers). Normally there is a farm shop here. A Radler (literally a cyclist but meaning a beer/lemonade shandy) and a sizeable plateful of German potato salad, a substantial Bratwürst and a crisp bread bun each, soon restored us. Unfortunately neither of us had room to sample some interesting confections, looking like giant jam and cream scones, being tackled by several local senior citizens... perhaps next time? Observing preparations for speeches and music on a stage in the middle of the barn, plus various individuals dressed in local costume and the promise of the appearance of a Tobacco Queen and South Wine Road Princess we gathered our plates and glasses and left town.
We still had about 20 km to ride northwards along the main Rhine embankment cycleway to reach Germersheim. As we entered the water meadows, lagoons and stands of massive willows bordering the Rhine our tempo increased along smooth tarmac. These are service roads alongside the flood embankments, with occasional pumping stations or access to the river bank. For cyclists they are a great boon and in high summer give superb stretches of every shade of greenery. Shortly before Germersheim we reached the riverside, where people and dogs paddled in the shallows or snoozed on a bench. The town is lovely with vast fortifications, partly intact and built too late to be any use. We cycled past the old moat and towers to the station and our train back to Mannheim. Back home our speedos displayed distances of around 76 km, mostly on trails unknown to us before. Another great day out in Rheinland Pfalz.