The most beautiful and mysterious town in the world (Victor Hugo, on Bacharach)

Left or right? That’s the dilemma of the morning. Left means certainty. Right means uncertainty and possible delay.

I’m talking about the left or right bank of the Rhein, and the decision about which bank to travel on to Bingen this morning. We had a clear-cut plan, a plotted route, but being burnt by a non-running ferry a few days ago has put us in this dilemma.

Our plan is to cross the river by bridge in Mainz and travel the right bank to Rüdersheim, then cross by ferry to Bingen. There is sketchy and ambiguous ferry information. In the best case, there is a ferry that runs regularly nearly all day. In the worst case, there is a passenger ferry that runs a few times till about 1pm, pauses for a loooong lunch break, then runs two more services. That’s it for the day.

We decide not to risk being on the wrong side of that lunch break and choose to ride the left bank.

Once upon a time we both had corporate jobs and had to make big decisions all the time. Now our greatest concern is which side of the river to ride along. How good is that?

Given we have no route loaded into Neil’s Garmin, we have to wing it and follow the “official” EV15 signs. Should be a piece of cake, right?

I wish. We lose the route pretty soon after getting out of the inner city of Mainz. Along a path, past a carnival setting up for what looks like will be fun times, then a blockage, no clear detour, then finally route lost.

We poke around for a while, following dead ends that initially look good. At one point we’re travelling two kilometres for every one kilometre we’re getting closer to Bacharach. Eventually we find a signpost and all is largely good from there.

It takes about 10km to get completely away from Mainz. There’s an industrial area, and then a series of small vegetable plots, where people are out tending their gardens. We’ve seen this on the outskirts of a few towns on our travels – community gardens? Individual plots? I don’t know.

Finally we’re riding through open countryside, with the farmland, corn and wheat fields landscape we’ve become accustomed to. The route is flat and we ride fairly fast, stopping only once for a Schwip Schwap, which is an intriguely named, weirdly German mix of cola and orange and is uniquely German. It’s just a lot weird and I for one would prefer straight cola or straight orange.

On the outskirts of Bingen we encounter the remains of the Hindenburgbrücke (Hindenburg Bridge). It’s an old railway bridge which went into service in 1915, was destroyed in the World War 2 and was never rebuilt.

Here’s the question. Had we taken the right bank of the river as planned, would we have tried Schwip Schwap? Would we have encountered anything like the Hindenburgbrücke? Would it have been a better, more interesting ride? We will never know!

To rub a little salt in, as we pass through Bingen we check out the ferries. Yes, there is a passenger ferry with a restricted schedule. But there is also a car ferry that runs regularly, almost all day, and yes, bikes and their riders can use it. So we could have … could have/should have/would have … it doesn’t matter any more.

With Bingen comes the start of the Rhein Gorge, a 65km stretch of the Rhein River that is famous for towering medieval Castles, steep terraced vineyards and is a Unesco World Heritage site. This stretch of river has the highest density of castles in the world – there are some forty or more castles. And where the rest of Germany copped a belting towards the end of WW2, it seems that these gems survived, even though the surrounding areas were heavily impacted. I guess bridges and transportation infrastructure is strategic. Castles on the other hand probably didn’t have a lot of strategic importance.

Lucky for us, and for the whole world.

We spend the last 13km of the day, from Bingen to Bacharach riding with swivelling heads as castle after castle appear. We are riding down close to the river, below a railway line, and that blocks some of our best views. It’s nice, but not as nice as it could be. It seems the best way to see the gorge is by boat, so we decide to take a boat trip tomorrow, which is a planned rest day for us.

Bacharach is spectacularly beautiful. We ride through a town gate and stop at our hotel, which is a quaint, old-world place just metres from the old town wall. It’s also just metres from the train line, which has a busy 200 or more trains passing every day! Our room looks right out at not just the river, but the railway line. Thank goodness for European double-glazing! It almost keeps the sound out!

Neil and I have been together 25 years this year. We celebrated our 10 and 15 years at a swish, three star Michelen restaurant in Paris, while our 20 years fell during the non-years of the COVID epidemic and was hence a non event. We’ve now (today) decided to celebrate our 25 years by eating at five very good restaurants along the way on this trip. We ate at a lovely place in Colmar and then another in Strasbourg, so that’s two in France, decided retrospectively. We’ve decided to do two very nice places in Germany, and another in the Netherlands (if there is such a thing!).

Tonight we’re eating at Stübers Restaurant which is a slow-food place that has a vegetarian menu! It’s not hard to get on my restaurant list – a dedicated vegetarian meal will do it. This place is not really fine dining, but it is a notch above and is a bit special. We roll out after three courses, full and happy.

The nights are long now and after dinner we take a stroll on the remnants of the old town wall, which happens to pass by the front doors of a few houses. So many of these towns manage to incorporate the really ancient parts of the town into slightly more modern buildings. I would expect the modern buildings in this case are still a few hundred years old.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 53.35km
• Climb: 52m
• Average speed: 15.4km/h
• Average temperature: 23C
• Moving time: 3:27:49
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken at a restaurant/bar in Bacharach, right near the church. The church bells were probably ringing; they do that a lot.

Along the way today:

Click on an image to scroll through the gallery at full size.