Day 10 - Andel to Ellenz-Poltersdorf

Saturday, July 12th 2014  -  Day 10

Andel to Ellenz-Poltersdorf

67.4 km , 435.8 km so far

elevation gains:  363 meters 

Track for the day: 

Andel to Ellenz-Poltersdorf

Overcast in morning, after that, well...   

temp from 16 to 21 Celsius (very pleasant, actually)

(The text is by Erika with pictures and captions or comments in italics added by Marvin) 


Boy, do I ever sleep well these days! Marvin seems to find energy most evenings to work on the computer for a while but after writing my blog, I am out like a light!

We rose this morning to another great breakfast. They even made us an omelette and said it was to make sure we had energy for the trail.

It was a short couple of kilometre cycle to get to Bernkastel-Kues.

The old castle ruins looked very interesting, but it would have been quite a long ride to find our way up and we were anxious to 

It was like stepping back in time (one you looked past all the tourists). One beamed building after another. Marvin, under my gentle direction, took a lot of pictures as a description won't do it justice. Our pictures probably won't either. One little alley wove its way into the next. One of the real jewels of the town is the church that dates back to the 1400s and has been maintained in the original style. The paintings, carvings and frescos are wonderful. It is not a large church like the Dom we saw yesterday, but its authenticity is nice to see.

OK, name the movie:  "Carol's not grungy, she's bitch'n"

Butcher shop

Back on the path, we see a brood of geese

See how the vast vineyards are planted around every rocky outcrop

Explanation of how the large sundials were set up to be view-able from the river

It was too overcast to tell the time today

The next time we cycle this path, it looks like there will be a huge new bridge to go under

We then cycled on to Traben-Trarbach and happened on a Weinfest. Various vintners had stands set up for people to sample their products. There were carnival type rides for children, a bretzel stand (from which we enjoyed a cheese and black forest ham bretzel) and, to Marvin's great enjoyment, a band stand with a local brass ensemble playing. I must say, they were great and really added to the atmosphere. It was a real treat to stumble onto such an event.

I Really liked  these pretzels with the cheese and flecks of ham on them

I just took this picture so we would not forget what town it was

The band was obviously local and they were very good.
I videotaped a little

While we sat and listened to the band and ate our pretzels, it had started sprinkling a little and we felt lucky to be under a canopy.  But it had mostly let up as we started on out of town.  However, before too long it was sprinkling off and on enough to make us put on our rain gear.

Still, it wasn't too wet to discourage us from stopping for a bench of the day

As Erika describes below, we crossed the river to the left bank, although my GPS track for the day shows it was at
Reil, about 6 km beyond Enkirch.  At this point we are on the left bank, so we were more than 10 km downstream of Traben-Trarbach where we had enjoyed the band

So for about 10km we had been wearing rain gear because it kept sprinkling enough to keep it on but not enough to keep us from sitting on a bench.

That was about to change ...
(back to Erika's narrative)

 The only way to really assess if something is truly water proof is to wear it in a deluge. I learned today that my "waterproof coat" isn't! It had been grey all morning but we had optimistically assumed that the sun would burn off the clouds. It was not to be. When it first started spitting we put on our rain gear to be safe. It rained for a while and then settled down for a while. At Enkirch we had chosen to cross over to the left bank of the Mosel as by the map it looked like some of the path ahead on the right side were not paved. We hadn't gone too far down the path when it really started to rain. It poured!

We had noted earlier that the oxbow (not actually an oxbow but a big teardrop shaped curve in the river with us on the inside bank of the curve) that the town of Zella is on had something rare for the Radweg. It had a short cut over the vineyards that would cut 8 kilometres off of our ride. This was possible because in that area the mountains dropped into a saddleback. As the rain pelleted down and I tried to see between the drops on my glasses, a short cut seemed like a brilliant idea so up and over we went. 

If you look at the GPS track of the day you will see the place where we cut across the saddle of the high valley side and  shortened our trip.  If you zoom in, you will see that at first we started to follow the river the long way around and then turned around and went back to take the short cut.  This was because in the pouring rain, when we got to the cutoff, it looked rather steep and we were worried about it being slippery with all the water that was running down the road.  Then as we continued on down the radweg, we could look up the hill above us and see that it didn't look like it stayed steep for all that long.  So we turned around and went back to try it.  It was a good decision.  The bikes handled it very well and it saved us 8 km right there and then.  

This picture was taken as we headed up the cutoff road.  Note the river of water running down the left side of the road.  It was hard to take a picture and have any chance of keeping up to Erika.  She had her head down and there was no stopping her.

Had the weather been better it would have been nice to have stopped and enjoyed the view of the valley but today a quick glance had to suffice. Again we crossed a bridge to the other side of the river (raining just as hard there! Go figure ;). We then sailed along the road which fortunately had very little traffic (probably because sane people stay inside when it is raining that hard).

OK, now to give you my version of this adventure:  When we came over the saddle of the "mountain" (which is really just the hill formed by the valley on both sides of it) we had a very steep descent to the highway below.  We made sure to take it at a very slow speed so as not to risk slipping or skidding.  This picture is taken as we proceeded down the highway toward the bridge that we would cross to the right bank.  I was trying to capture the look of the rain as it bounced off the highway.

Remember my earlier reference a few days before to baptism by sprinkling?  OK, this was the baptism by "immersion" into rainy conditions that I alluded to :)  I have to say that I was really truly enjoying it.  It wasn't cold, just very wet.
When we crossed the bridge we waved to several other cyclists who were huddled under the train bridge.  There was no point in stopping, we were already soaked.  It was hilarious!  Also hilarious to me was how there was no stopping Erika.  She just charged up the hill on the other side of the bridge without looking to the right or left.  After about a kilometer, we topped out and then found a place to turn left and get back down to the road by the river.  We followed this road for about 4km into Neef.  The rain had now lightened to nothing. 

 When we entered the town of Neef we stopped at the first restaurant on the road. There we peeled off our wet gear, I changed into dry clothes, and had a bowl of goulash soup. Not the best but it hit the spot at that time. While we ate we discussed how far we wanted to go. By then it had stopped raining again and we were ready to gamble on getting closer to Cochem for easy striking in the morning. We identified a gasthaus in Ellenz-Poltersdorf and decided to head there. To our delight there was no more rain and the gasthaus is lovely. So now our once pristine room is draped with drying clothes in anticipation of tomorrow's ride to Cochem and on to Koblenz.

Sometimes we would get confused by town names.  We were looking for a street in Ellenz-Poltersdorf that had a gasthaus that was listed in Bett und Bike.  But first we turned into what turned out to be Poltersdorf and couldn't find the street.  Still we saw a few things that got pictures taken.

So here is a picture for Steve's friend who likes tractors.  Note the water spot on the lens.  Hmmm, that could spell trouble ... (spoiler alert)

As you can see by this time, we have dried out considerably

When we looked at the map more closely, we realized that Ellenz-Poltersdorf was a separate town still downstream from us.  Across the river, on the right bank was the town of Beilstein and above it on the hill was this castle.

Once we got to the "Ellenz" part of the town, we found the street we were looking for easily and they had room for us.  So we dumped our stuff and did some walking about town for a bit

As has been seen in previous towns, grape vines grow everywhere

I'm noting the very fine slate work that is done on this roof

Our gasthaus for the night is on a Weingut (wine estate), run by the Familie Schneider

This is their family seal, their official brand of wine

We have now done over 400 kilometres since we started and can't believe we have less than a week left to our vacation. Even the challenging weather has been enjoyable when you sit back and realize what you have done. The area remains breathtaking and the people warm and welcoming. As soon as we get home we want to start saving to come back. My love affair with German not only continues but has developed to a new depth.