Friday 27th - Saturday 28th September

Nierstein - Bacharach 

Bacharach - Bad Breisig via Koblenz

Total kms 164 (and the last ten nearly killed me!)

Weather was pretty grim yesterday and our start wasn't much better. Everything stopped at an horrendous main road so we knew we had missed something. After five minutes of leaving the hotel, we had been lost and found. Pleasant wander through the vineyards then along the river to Mainz. Another city of grand architecture and quite a few people! Searched out an excellent cake shop where the owner clearly felt sorry for this misfortunate foreigner who understood no German, and presented me with a present of extra cake, free. So many nice folk around. Traverse of Mainz was going really well until we were halted by a very high fence, beyond which a new huge road bridge was being constructed, and no way forward for two hapless cyclists. Never beaten for long, we found an alternative .

The scenery was changing rapidly as we entered the Rhine Gorge from flat plains to steep rock walls and vineyards clinging to the hillside. Pretty villages followed one after the other and so intrigued were we by all this, we took the wrong ferry across the river. Al was totally bemused by his magic machine having gone bonkers until we realised our error! Navigation experts! Huh!

Retired for night in another touristy village and enjoyed a supermarket meal on our medieval balcony at the top of four flights of spiral stairs! Good view though.

So on to today. It is clear why all the tourist visiting the Rhine would want to wander along this bit. It historically interesting as well as being very picturesque. As ever, many people can spoil some of the natural beauty and the particularly ugly river cruisers (my very subjective opinion) of which there are many, do nothing to enhance the river traffic. 

Koblenz with its magnificent fortified hillside town and cable car came and went as we weaved our way through the mindless throng. We passed Die Lorelei which looks like most of the cliffs along the gorge but some foresightful soul in the past has used the legend to draw in the crowds - clever stuff!

It has been a thoroughly pleasant ride, all dry and some sunshine. Met up with nostril wind towards 70kms (very bad timing) but had to keep going to avoid the overcrowding of accommodation in the honey pots. 

Lovely B&B and no crowds.