Thursday 24 January 2013

Black Forest 2012: Day 6 - Basel, Switzerland - Mosel Valley, Germany

Before I continue writing about the Black Forest trip (it is almost finished, honest!) I just wanted to say well done to Psy for passing his theory test yesterday :). He can now concentrate on the rest of his bike training and hopefully we will have him along on our trip in the summer!

Day 6: Basel, Switzerland - Mosel Valley, Germany - 31/08/2012
Miles: 235 appx.

This was the point where we started heading gradually back towards Calais. We took a different way north, choosing to use the French route rather than the German autobahn. The journey to the Mosel Valley was another fast route, opting to get to our destination as quickly as we could in order to go for a ride around the area. This was the journey we took:

I believe we got to the guest house at around 3 or 4pm. The weather was a bit on and off for most of the ride up there and was pretty wet around the valley. I also noticed the zip on my wallet was broken so asked the owners of the guesthouse if they knew where I could pick up a new one. The nearest town was Bernkastel and it so happened there was a local festival on that weekend. So we settled into our room and headed on out.


We parked up next the river and started walking into the town. As we started walking down the main high street, Emma realised she did her famous "key-in-bike" trick again so we had to go back. Luckily the key was still there so walked away, with relief on our faces, back towards the high street.

Most of the shops in Bernkastel were shut but there was a wallet shop still open. The lady there was very helpful, trying to help me pick out a wallet I liked. I finally decided on one and went to pay. The price of it was €69 - a bit more than I wanted to pay for a wallet! However, as she was so helpful and patient I decided to get it as a birthday present to myself.


Despite the weather, we still decided to go for a ride out as planned. Unfortunately I forgot to add the route I planned for this day onto the sat nav so I asked Emma to "get us lost". Emma likes bendy, backstreet roads and as the area was so beautiful we figured we would find the best views and roads this way. After finding ourselves lost in a few vineyards we eventually got onto some nice roads and views. We only stayed out for about an hour before we headed back to the guest house.

For those interested, the original route that I had planned is here (about 82 miles):


We went out for a quick bite at the local kebabery and brought the food back to the guest house. A friend of Emma's from the SV forum was staying also at the guest house at this time so we stayed up and chatted for a bit before getting a relatively early night ready for our trip back to Belgium the next day. 

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