The Vitals
Date: September 5 – 18, 2022
Location: Basel CH to Delft NL
Distance: ~730 km cycled and 200 km train
Partners: Brittany
Resources: Eurovelo gps tracks, Guidebook by Mike Wells. We carried a paper copy of the guidebook. Great to read ahead on the segments with little fun facts and good routing suggestions when there are choices.
Photos: Brittany
The Trip
If reading seems too much like school, check out Eurovelo 15 in 6 minutes.
Alsace, France
From the beginning we planned to leave Eurovelo 15 in Basel and take a train into the Alsace region of France to follow a wine-based cycling route before rejoining Eurovelo 15 in Strasbourg. To help with our time constraints, we boarded a high-speed train in dreary, rainy Basel and were whisked 70 km to Colmar in 45 minutes where the weather was hot and sunny instead.
We toured the main park and old town of Colmar with hundreds of other tourists before riding out of town towards the small hills to the west. The afternoon was spent passing through a handful of small towns with prominent wine-tourism amenities. Our destination was the very small town of Châtenois where we had rented a room in a large house that was hundreds of years old with big, square beams.
The town was filled with cats which we tried to entice as we walked around before dinner. We learned first-hand how restaurants are closed in the afternoon, only reopening for dinner around 7:00. How very European. We were hungry by then and had a very pleasant meal sitting outside on the street. In such a small town, there is only one seating for dinner. Once most people were finished around 9:00, the bills were paid and the restaurant was left to to a few lingering patrons.
In the morning we ate breakfast on the B+B’s terrace with homemade yogurt and lots of fruit. Before heading out to ride (destination: Strasbourg), I went to a bakery and bought croissants and pretzels for the day and was happy to complete the transaction in French.
After seven straight days of riding, the fatigue had built up and even this relatively short 60 km day felt like a lot to take on. We passed through more small wine towns and got a talking to for letting ourselves into a community center to use the bathroom. After lunch, we started to make our way more directly to the city of Strasbourg and passed through more farming-oriented towns including the cabbage capital of France. These towns were almost eerily devoid of other people and we didn’t make any stops. The final few kilometers before the old town in Strasbourg were spent in worsening traffic and a bike lane that would jump over curbs and weave around lamp posts.
By the time we reached the hotel right in the middle of the old town, we were ready for a lie down and some decompression. Once some energy was restored, we went to a wine cellar in the basement of the hospital (very prestigious and 700 years old) and people-watched along the Ill river. We had a rest day in Strasbourg where we visited the cathedral in the day and night, ate more nice food, and took a walking tour of La Petite France neighbourhood.
Germany again
Leaving Strasbourg was much more pleasant than the trip in, with a nice cycle path along the river and then a forested section of leafy green trees and quiet roads. After an hour or two, we started to parallel a long landscaped section of the river with a decent tailwind. The next few hours were fairly boring as we were riding on straight roads with a perfect grass dyke on our right obscuring the river and trees on the left without much change. At some point we passed the most easterly point in France and passed into Germany but without any fanfare.
We would need to cross the river numerous times in the next few days on small, frequent ferries for a nominal fee. In the late afternoon after a rain shower, we made our first crossing in order to reach the city of Karlsruhe and the home of some hosts from warmshowers. The city was planned with a palace tower at the heart and 32 streets radiating out from the center in a fan shape which we managed to navigate after collecting apples from some trees in a small park.
The hosts were a little north of the city and welcomed us for dinner with their three children. We had a late evening with wine and shared lots of stories of our respective trips to central Asia and others. If we were on another limitless tour, we would have stayed for a few more days but instead we had to leave in the morning to ride to Worms via Mannheim.
This day consisted of another decent tailwind, a few more rain showers, and lots of flat countryside. A midday stop in Speyer was the the highlight in terms of historic cities and, later, Mannheim provided some industrial sights like a gigantic chemical plant and lots of new cars being shipped by train. We crossed the Rhine on a bridge from Mannheim to Ludwigshafen as big, black clouds gathered yet again to finish off the ride to Worms. The rain mostly missed us as we hurried along next to fields north of the city. We arrived in Worms fairly late as the sun began to set and found the hotel I booked left a lot to be desired. Too tired and hungry to change, we left for a big dinner of Turkish food as the rain returned with the biggest downpour of the day. After the delicious greasy dinner, we washed it down with gelato and a walk through the soaked streets.
From Worms we took another deviation to the Eurovelo 15 route. To save a little distance, we chose to bypass Mainz via a hilly and windy route through Alzey to Bingen. This was one of the hardest days of the trip as bad weather and head winds slowed progress. Mid-morning we addressed a glaring gear issue by making a tape “fender” for Brittany’s rear wheel to finally prevent her from soaking her back as we rode through the numerous rain showers. In Alzey I had a proud moment when I recognized some German as a motorist yelled “One-way street” at me.
From a high-point in the hills beyond Alzey we could appreciate the view, surrounded by wind turbines with cold, windy fields all around. We could just start to see in the distance the beginnings of the Rhine Gorge at Bingen. A couple of hours later we returned to the river, excited for the sights of the famous gorge.
Our entrance to the gorge was heralded in typical fashion by another bout of rain. We got properly soaked but it passed after about 20 minutes and the sun came out and we began to dry off. A few kilometers before our destination for the night, we stopped at a lookout across from the town of Kaub. This town has fewer than 1000 people but had been in the international news in the weeks leading up to our trip because it is the shallowest part of the middle Rhine. A lack of rain in the summer meant that depths at Kaub were too low for fully-loaded commercial traffic and causing a lot of concern for the international trade that depends on this artery.
At the lookout we met a group of very drunk men wearing costumes and pushing a cart full of drinks and a fake roast pig while blasting music. They invited us for a drink that we reluctantly accepted but quickly warmed to them as they told us (mostly by shouting) about their yearly tradition of walking 10 km to the town of Oberwesel while drinking on the day Oberwesel hosts a wine festival and fireworks. We had already planned to camp in Oberwesel and now had something to look forward to in the evening. Full of beer, jello shots, and fireworks-viewing advice, we left the group to get our campsite and cleaned up for the festival.
In the old town that evening, we purchased two wine glasses that can then be filled by any of the vendors on the street. All of the menus were split into “Rieslings” and “Not Rieslings” so we sampled a few Rieslings in the packed streets with bands playing on a small stage beneath the city’s fortified walls. Around 8:30 we headed up the stairs to the top of the wall. All of the lights in town went out and red flares were lit in the streets before huge speakers attached to cranes on the other side of the river announced the start of the show. The fireworks were incredible as river cruise ships anchored in the water to watch and trains full of passengers sped through the gorge. After the show, we joined the thousands of people walking through the streets to get back to their various beds.
The next day was to be a short day before another rest in Koblenz at the north end of the Rhine Gorge. We started on the bike paths of Oberwesel that were covered in broken glass from last night’s festival. This section of riding was marked by steep vineyards perched on terraces in the gorge, a nice cycle path, and many cruise ships that come from Koblenz.
We took a day off in Koblenz checking out the old city, the confluence at Deutsches Eck of the Moselle and Rhine rivers, and took the gondola over the Rhine to see the view from an old Prussian fortress. We needed to save some more time and had decided to save another ~130 km of riding by taking the train from Koblenz to Duisburg. This skipped Bonn, Cologne, and Dusseldorf and the numerous steelworks and power plants therein. Riding this industrial heartland would have been interesting in its own way, but we desired a few days off the bike once we reached the sea.
Our third last day was the biggest travel day as we started with that 130 km train trip, arriving in Duisburg by 10:00 am. From the station, we remounted and pedalled out of town taking in some of the industrial sights. The terrain had flattened considerably and that wouldn’t change for the remainder of the trip. We pedalled another 100+ km on mostly dyke roads with the occasional silly detours to avoid a short section of private land. One of the major sights of the day was “Wunderland Kalkar” – an amusement park built in a never-commissioned nuclear power plant.
Netherlands
In the late afternoon with energy waning, we crossed the border with the Netherlands and then crossed the “Rijn” on a Dutch ferry. The highlight of the day was lucking into a beautiful, small campground in Pannerden with very friendly neighbours and a delightful, cosy common room.
The second last morning was dark with some heavy drops and threatening skies as we pedalled towards Arnhem, the first city we would pass in the Netherlands. Arnhem was surrounded by sandy soil and forests of tall trees and the route we followed twisted through these dark woods. It was also interesting to notice that red brick houses and thatched roofs became commonplace after crossing into the Netherlands.
Once we left the forests west of Arnhem, the riding became a bit monotonous most of the day. There was a lot of dyke-road riding but more traffic on these roads than we had experienced so far, with big vehicles and fast cars. A highlight was watching the locks connecting to a 50 km long canal to Amsterdam. More dykes brought us to Schoonhoven for our last camp and my neck was really starting to bother me after so many days on the bike.
The owner directed us to pitch our tent near the river and make sure our door faced the passing ships so we could wake up to the view. We took her advice, showered, and walked into town for supper. As we readied for bed we got a visitor in the form of a little cat which Brittany allowed into the tent for some evening pets and purrs.
The last morning we awoke with the cat having slept all night under the fly on Brittany’s clothes. We petted her some more then loaded up for one more ride. Early on we rode through Kinderdijk – a collection of 19 windmills formerly used to drain the polders. Later we would ride through dozens of wind turbines generating electricity on the Atlantic coast and couldn’t help but notice the parallels.
We passed Rotterdam, the massive storm surge gates of the Maeslant Barrier, and finally reached the pier at the Hook of Holland. This was the end. The river emptied into a stormy sea as we rode over the broken pavement of the pier with ocean spray from the high winds until we reached the lighthouse at the very end. Our chilly visit was brief before returning to town and the local train to Delft.
Our last days off the bike were spent scrambling for bike boxes (11 bike shops in two cities, had to run to the Hague to get them), avoiding bursts of rain, being tourists, and enjoying the views from our hotel room which stretched from Rotterdam to the cranes of the Europoort. While comfort and relative luxury were our goals, we still ended up cycling over 1200 km in 15 days and earned the fatigue we felt. It’s hard to relax the ambition when there is so much to see but I think we are learning better every trip which tradeoffs maximize our experience.
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