Leaving Luxembourg, I headed east to the Mosel and cycled up the river. The valley's full of vineyards up to the top of the hills on both sides... the water is very muddy though. By the end of the afternoon, I get to Bernkastel-Kues and decide to spend the night here.

Bernkastel-Kues... a really pretty village on the Mosel river, surrounded by vineyards.

In the morning, I continued cycling up the river. By the time I got to Traben-Trabarch, I was fed-up... 25 kms and I basically made no headway, just followed the river around a mountain... So I decided to cross the mountains directly going east and head for the Rhine. Well, the climb up the mountains lasted for some 7 kms but it was nice and cool so I didn't sweat too much. The road then levelled out and I continued east on this elevated plateau. I was headed for Baccarach on the Rhine, but the road changed on me to a divided highway that didn't allow bicycles, so I changed to a "B" road headed for Bingen and at Stromberg I decided to settle for the night.

In the morning, I cycle to Bingen, wander the city a bit, and then continue south along the Rhine (a big river with lots of commercial traffic, barges) to Mainz. At Mainz, I wandered a bit again, but it didn't appeal too much to me so I continued on to Worms where I settled for the night.

In the morning, I continued following the Rhine south to Manheim, a big depressing city... By this time, I was disappointed with the Rhine river and decided to switch to the Neckar river and continued southeast along it.

I soon cycled into mountains and the scenery improved tremendously... Beautiful villages along the way... I wandered a bit around Heidelberg and continued on. A little further on, I saw this village, Hirschhorn across the river (below), isn't it just pretty ?

A little further on, I saw this castle (Zwingenberg castle) perched on the side of a hill overlooking the Neckar river. Man ! I was really getting enchanted with the Neckar valley...

And then, I saw this castle at Neckarzimmern, on a hilltop surrounded by vineyards. There was a little inn just on the side of the castle and I decided to stop there for the night... I figure that I had earned it !

I ate dinner at the inn... WOW !... A chanterelle cream soup followed by game ragout with local red wine. The ragout was to die for... with a thick brown sauce, wild mushrooms, potato dumplings (potato balls rolled in bread crumbs and seasoning, then boiled in hot water) and a wild berry sweet sauce on the side... Just delicious ! A beautiful meal, to crown a beautiful ride along the Neckar valley...

In the morning it was raining cats and dogs so I stayed in bed... It was raining continuously, a real downpour and by 10h30 AM I decided I had to leave since checkout time was 11. This inn was quite expensive and there was a Youth Hostel at Heilbronn half a day's ride away, and I could always continue on to Aalen if the rain let up. So I put my rain gear on and left. Well, it rained continuously so I settled in Heilbronn.

The morning's weather was fine, so I left early. I would never have reached Aalen yesterday, even in nice weather with an early start...The first 30 kms were all uphill, from the Neckar valley to the Kocher valley through mountains... And then, the cycle along the Kocher river was all uphill, up the river to Aalen where I settled for the night. 114 kms in all, but it was a nice cycle.

Near Aalen, on a quiet section of the Kocher river, these kids were floating downriver on their inner tubes...

My next goal was to cycle a section of the Danube river, so in the morning I set out east towards Danauworth. It was uphill for the first 15 kms out of the Kocher valley, then relatively flat and finally dropping into the Danube valley... 70 kms to get to Danauworth... A beautiful little village, very touristy, were I spent a couple of hours eating pastries. I then went to cycle the Danube eastwards along what is called the "Romantish Route"... A bit disappointing... First of all, the Danube isn't blue... but dirty brown... and then, it's nowhere near the river, but rather up and down the surrounding hills... You only see the river twice in 50 kms...

When I got to Ingolstadt, I decided to settle down for the night... Checked out my e-mails and found out that a friend would come and join me in Rome in early September, so I'll have to cycle south from now on...

I left Ingolstadt in the morning headed south for Munich. Well, 10 kms out the "13" turned to a car only highway, so I tried a smaller parallel road, which, after a little while turned southwest towards Augsburg... I couldn't find a cyclable road to Munich... I finally called it a day in Friedberg, a bit southeast of Augsburg, having decided to avoid Munich.

I left early and cycled west to Augsburg. From there I turned south on the "Romantish Route" again, which would get me, I was told, into the Alps... The weather was cool and foggy, the path took me into forests, along rivers and small lakes on a gentle rise all the way... I was well into farmlands and small roads. Around noon, the fog lifts, and the sun shines. I met with Suzanne who was cycling the same way on a day trip. We stop at Landsberg for ice cream, as it got pretty hot going uphill, then we continued on to Schongau the route steep at times. I took a guestroom while Suzanne phoned her husband to come and pick her up (we cycle all-day and it takes him 30 minutes to drive all the way here to pick her up...) and we all have dinner on a 'terasse' in the village. This is my last day in Germany.

My overall impressions of Germany... Well, the cycling paths here have a much better surface than anything in Scandinavia or the Benelux, though, as in those other countries, they're circuitous and sometimes badly indicated...

The Germans, with their relatively densely populated country and their industriousness, have managed to keep a significant amount of old forests with mixed trees... and the cycling paths are often routed through these... which provided good scenery and needed shade while cycling.

And the Germans themselves, though a disciplined people (I was often been honked at and pointed to the paths when cycling on roads,... you don't read or write while eating,... young men don't think of avoiding the military/civil service, etc...) are friendly and easy to talk to and helpful... for instance at a bike shop looking for a part, the shop owner couldn't help me with my particular requirement but noticed that one of my bottle holders had broken welds and gave me another one for free... In Germany, I never lacked company when I felt like talking and even had a cycling companion for most of a day.

And the food... though not striking in the north, is certainly great in the south and particularly so in Bavaria... great soups (I remember a great cream of chanterelle, a heavily scented chicken broth with a huge liver meatball, and another finely spiced chicken broth with shredded crepes...), nicely prepared veal and especially pork with beautiful rich sauces, nice pastries and just superb cheesecakes... Man, it's a wonder the Germans are not all fat...

Amongst the noteworthy areas I've cycled, particularly in the south, were portions of the Mosell, Rhine, Neckar and Danube river valleys and the Neckar valley (between Heidleberg and Heilbronn) just beats them all... it's superb, with beautiful cycle paths on both riversides, nicely wooded areas, quaint little villages, tightly packed hills which dramatizes the scenery and surprisingly not touristy. The Mosell is just way packed with tourists and tour buses, and the scenery is boring with winery after winery from river edge to top of the hills on both sides... The Rhine is just way too busy with commercial traffic, and the roads and paths along the Danube (at least for the portion I cycled) were badly routed through the surrounding hills rather than along the river...

The Neckar valley cycle was certainly the highlight of my transit through Germany and I crowned it off with a stay at a beautiful hotel by an old castle on a hilltop and a superb dinner...

To finish up on a humorous note... In Canada, we have garage sales, where people individually set up their old junk in front of their houses and try to sell it off... Well in Germany (as well as in Holland and Belgium, though I may have failed to talk about it earlier) they organize it into open air markets in town centers or other convenient places with the most industrious ones combining it with carrousel rides for the kids in an all around fair type of atmosphere... and I'm told it's quite the pastime in Germany... I don't know if they make money at it but they certainly seem to enjoy it...