Day 8 – On the home straight to Koblenz

Deutsches Eck - we're there.

  

We left Treis Karden and continued along the left bank.  This involved about 15 kilometres on a cycle path adjacent to the road. 

 

A few kilometres out of Treis Karden there is the “romantic” Eltz castle.  We chose not to go there as it involved going off the path for a couple of kilometres then a 45 minute walk.  Seeing yet another castle was not so high on our bucket list so we bypassed it. 

 

The next place of note was Koburn-Gondorf which is the central cultural and historical town of the Lower Mosel.  It has five castles and two medieval chapels.  Trish called into the town and did a self-guided walking tour around it.

This castle greeted us as we came to Koburn-Gondorf

 

We knew she was going to be there and coincidentally as we were looking for somewhere to have a bite to eat and a coffee, she was walking across the road.   jGraham bellowed at her to get her attention.  There was a bakery across the road from her that looked inviting.  We all had a snack there and then we parted ways to ride  through the centre of town which seemed to be almost completely abandoned.  Nothing seemed to be open.  I suspect it was another town that comes alive in May for about six months. 

 

 
The very quiet centre of Koburn-Gondof

 
The path took us away from the traffic and it was very close to the local vineyards that were crawling up the hill.   I did clamber up amongst the budding vines and it felt steeper than what it looked like.  It was interesting to speculate about how the workers managed to do things in the vineyard without tumbling down. 
Riding through the vines

Up close and personal to the vines 

 

We were closing in on Koblenz.  I thought I knew where I was going but we ended up taking the wrong bridge across the river.  We started along a cycle path that would take would take us into Koblenz.  I knew that the Mosel Cycle Path followed the river into the city to a place called Deutsches Eck (German Corner) where the trail ended for us.  It is at the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel.  I realised very quickly we should have taken a road that would take us to the river.  Sure enough my navigation was eventually correct.  So a little bit of backtracking  and soon we were riding the last few kilometres on a bike path adjacent to the river.    

 

Finally, having spent a lot of those last few kilometres dodging children, adults, dogs and other riders we arrived at Deutsches Eck having cycled around 220 kilometres on regular bikes.  To say the least we were rather pleased for ourselves.  We took photos and had a woman offer to take photos of the three of us.  She was part of a group of two couples.  We chatted for a few moments, and they claimed to have also cycled the Mosel path on regular bike.  We think something was lost in translation as they did not look to be cyclists let alone able to do the 200kms.  Nonetheless they were lovely. 


We are at the confluence - Deutsches Eck

 

A couple of more bends and we will be at the end

Very steep vineyards Lower Mosel

The meeting of the Rhine and Mosel



A castle as we near Koburn-Gondof

The castle we took the gondola to

After taking a zillion photographs, I navigated the team to our hotel where we were able to check-in.  We saw a gondola that takes people to the from Deutsches Eck to a huge castle overlooking Koblenz that thought would be good .  Trish was at the hotel so after quickly changing into other clothes we walked briskly down to the gondola  to find that we would not get into the castle due to it closing thirty minutes after us arriving.  We chose to take the ride anyway.  It was a great view.  Unfortunately getting decent photos was difficult due to the sun be very low and in the face of the cameras/


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