Day 11: Boppard to Mainz - Grampies Tour de France Spring 2018 - CycleBlaze

April 6, 2018

Day 11: Boppard to Mainz

Yesterday's entry led off with the story of the Rhine flood that affected our hotel so seriously early in the year. We have now received two photos from the owner, that tell the tale. Wow!

Our hotel in Boppard - two months ago!
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Scott AndersonI especially like that it has all those bikes in it.
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6 years ago
Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Scott AndersonThey will need the "wet" style chain lube.
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A view of our hotel from a drone
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The trauma seems quickly forgotten though, and today was our day to roll along the Rhine promenade, past a succession of fairy tale villages and castles. The part of the Rhine Valley that we cycled today was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997. It is 65 km long and it's a real winner. Here is a shot from a billboard, that gives an idea of all the sights that are packed in here.

So many castles and little towns
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We began of course in Boppard, where we had spent the night. Our hotel, the Rebstock (which means grape vine) was very elegant, and except for the exploding bathtub we really appreciated it.

The rest of the town was of the same standard, with beautiful buildings and little traffic. We could have explored a lot more, but of course is the call of the road ahead.

Our elegant hotel
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Near the market square
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Market square, Boppard
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Dodie really loves European wool shops. The one in Boppard had great sock wool in the window.
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The focal point of the world heritage valley area is the Loreley, which is a hill across from St. Goar.  The legend started with some poems in the early 1800's describing a lovely siren who sat on the hill and distracted sailors to crash on the rocks below. The legend and poems are so well known that you would expect to see "something" when you get there, but mainly it is just a hill.

From Boppard you can get on a smaller version of the long Rhine river boats and get taken down to Loreley and back for just 10 euros. That is a lovely cruise, but of course we were bicycling, not sailing. On the other hand the boats go at cycling speed, so we were accompanied by one for most of the way.

Often in cycling waterways we find that we are "racing" boats. But we find that (except for locks) they never get distracted or stop, while we do. So normally we lose. In this case the distraction was in the town of St. Goar.  The town has a large cuckoo clock shop, unusual since it is far from the Black Forest.  But we (I) love cuckoo clocks, so we stopped in for a chat. What to chat about? Well there is the always hot topic of whether to set a clock by rotating the minute hand clockwise or counter-clockwise. And then there was the question of why mine often starts to cuckoo and won't stop. And so on and so forth - for almost an hour!

Beautiful houses beyond Boppard
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Burg Maus, above St Goarhausen
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From this telephoto shot, Burg Maus looks abandoned
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The cuckoo clock shop, St Goar
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World's largest free hanging cuckoo clock, they say. They do admit there is that one which is as big as a house (is a house!) in the Black Forest
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My clock is actually in this group! There are 100's of styles and features in these clocks. One simple distinction is the Black Forest house (with the change in roof direction) vs the Swiss chalet. Both types are in this photo.
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Bill ShaneyfeltI was stationed near Ramstein/Kaiserslautern back '76-78, and we drove to the Black Forest area numerous times, took a Rhine cruise once, and bought some clocks. Ours was repaired several times before it just became a decoration. They sure do have a huge variety of them! Fond memories.
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6 years ago
Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Bill ShaneyfeltMine currently has bouts of cuckoo-ing without stop. Should I try to get it repaired?

What was the Rhine cruise like? The ships sure do look interesting.
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6 years ago
Bill ShaneyfeltTo Steve Miller/GrampiesWell, our clock has been a wall decoration for a couple decades now. Never had the continuous cucko mode. I would think that should be easy to fix. Probably some little cog worn out or something. Popular as they are, there should be a place you can get it worked on. (This is opinion only, and subject to total inaccuracy)

We enjoyed our short cruise. Saw the Loreli (however that is spelled) the Maus Turm and dozens of other castles. Long, long ago! Hard to remember much more than a few tiny snippets, and those are suspect in accuracy!

----->Bill
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6 years ago
Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Bill ShaneyfeltAh yes, we have seen Loreley and Lorelei.

I guess in a shorter cruise one would listen to a commentary and be on deck watching. But on a multi day one maybe one would end up in an easy chair and overeating at a buffet?
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One other thing of note in the shop was a jigsaw puzzle of Europe, which could be helpful in keeping track of all these countries we seem to cycle in. 

Hint: Weiss Russland is Belarus!
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Beyond St Goar, of course, castles came thick and fast. I never get them straight, even with good cartoon maps that show their profiles.  Anyway, I think this is Burg Katz:

Burg Katz?
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Bill ShaneyfeltQuick google search of images matches to Burg Katz.

----->Bill
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Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Bill ShaneyfeltHooray, I got one right!
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Horselina HorsingtonI can confirm this is Burg Katz. The name has nothing to do with a Katze though!
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6 years ago
Even railway tunnels look like castles here
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A Rhine boat passes the Loreley
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Oberwesel was the next town up, and it too was beautiful:

Scenes from Oberwesel
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Little market in Oberwesel
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As we travelled this prime section of Eurovelo 15 we encountered more and more touring cyclists. One even stuck his head into the above photo! Among the cyclists were quite a few family groups, often with fairly young children cycling on their own.  Here is one of those, from behind, because I only thought of taking the photo too late:

Kids can cycle here quite safely
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One important role of the castles along the river was to collect tolls from river traffic. One spot that was ideal for this was Falkenau Island, near Kalb, that had a toll castle built on it. It looks stunning there, in the middle of the river.

Toll castle at Kalb
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It carried on like this, past Bacharach and other towns and castles, until Bingen. At Bingen we stopped for bratwurst and currywurst. Currywurst is sausage doused in standard yellow curry powder. Our first time in Germany we thought they had to be kidding. But now here we are ordering it on purpose. Bingen does mark the end of the extreme fairy tale run, but it is still true that all the way to Mainz there are buildings and landscapes that are blockbuster by the standards of other places. But now, though we still enjoyed cycling by the river and seeing beautiful buildings, it was not quite the same. We had ferried across to the other bank, and now were coping with a much less distinct path and a certain amount of traffic.

Nothing wrong with this, but not as zippy as the World Heritage valley.
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Another factor in play was that we were getting exhausted. All day we had faced a strong head wind. The e-assist helps with this but it in no way erases it.

We were still 30 km from Mainz and we had optimistically booked a place about 4 km beyond that. Now it was time to buckle down and concentrate on getting there. But of course now was also the time to run into missing signage, missed signs, and construction blocking the way.  I was getting really tired, and was amazed at how Dodie just kept on. 

When you are exhausted, things like this in your path are very uncool:

Oh, great
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Finally we did find and cross the bridge to Mainz.  The public on this Friday afternoon clearly was not exhausted as we were, and were patronizing a fun fair along the river bank.

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We left the fun behind and continued south along the river bank, dodging the many people who were out for a stroll. At any point here a right turn would have taken us into the older town, but we were on a mission to find the hotel we had booked, before total collapse.  

Of course the GPS did eventually lead us to the place. Though is was somewhat out of town and neither new nor elegantly old, it is spacious and very restful.  The place is called the Bristol Hotel. Our bikes are happily stashed, resting in the basement. And boy, the fluffy duvet and good bed  looks so inviting for us now!

The Bristol Hotel
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Today's ride: 86 km (53 miles)
Total: 545 km (338 miles)

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Marvin PaxmanWe are really enjoying today's entry because we remember so well this area from our trip in 2014. We stayed in Boppard, very close to the river. I remember you were actually on the Rhine at the same time only way way up river.
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6 years ago