Last year I embarked on a grand undertaking - to bicycle hundreds of kilometers along the Rhein over the course of a week from Stein am Rhein in Switzerland to Cologne, Germany, where I have some relatives.
I did not make it all the way the Cologne, nor did I embark from Stein am Rhein.
I got this idea in my head during a pleasant spring bike ride near my home in Columbia, MD - an ideal place for growing people. As I rode my bike, I thought, "I could be biking along the Rhein in Germany". Then I did some searching on the internet and found an elderly couple's diary about how much they biked each day and where they stayed every night along the Rhein. I saw that they routinely did 30 to 40 miles per day. So I figured since I am young I could double that.
In the meantime, I convinced my friend, coworker and roommate, Brent, to come with me. We picked a date - Sept 15-22, 2005.
Though I had gone several times for 1 hour biking sessions at the gym, I started my real physical training on Aug 27 - long distance bicycling along the Northern Central Railroad Trail. The NCR Trail is 20 miles of stone-gravel trail going from Ashland, MD to the Pennsylvania border. In Pennsylvania, the trail becomes the York Heritage Trail and continues for another 22 miles. It is a beautiful trail along the now defunct NCR rail line. At mile 11 there is a place where you can buy chips, cookies, crackers, tomatoes, juice, sodas or water on the honor system. I biked 40 miles, but I would have to bike 80 miles in a day on my upcoming tour.
The next weekend I went out and did 60 miles. The following weekend - the last one before our trip - I made it 70 miles and aside from feeling the grime of dried sweat on my body, dust on my face and all exposed skin, and salt on my shirt, I felt quite confident.
This was our plan as of Sept 12...
Fri 16) arrive Basel in evening
Sat 17) Basel - Freiburg (50 mi)
Sun 18) Freiburg - Strasbourg (50 mi)
Mon 19) Strasbourg - Karlsruhe (79 mi)
Tue 20) Karlsruhe - Bensheim/Fehlsheim (60 mi)
Wed 21) Bensheim/Fehlsheim - Koblenz (83 mi)
Thur 22) Koblenz - Köln (64 mi)
I don't know exactly why, but most of these mileage quotes are totally wrong. I may have confused km with miles or used car driving distances instead - or just plain goofed. Nonetheless, I had arranged for a free room in someone's house EVERY night of the trip using couchsurfing.com and hospitalityclub.org.
So we arrived in Frankfurt, got our bikes and found a train to Basel, our point of departure with the bikes. I still did not even have a map or know anything about the physical routes we were going to take the next day.... so that was our Achilles' heel, planning-wise.
DAY 1 BASEL to FREIBURG (110km)
After asking random people on the street and in the Hauptbahnhof ("train station" - a German word most travelers will remember), we got to a local bookstore at about 0930 and purchased the correct bike route book Rheinradweg Teil 2: Von Basel bis Koblenz. After a brief and what would soon prove to be faulty inspection of the map, we were off. We left Basel heading north and were in the forests of Alsace, a departement of eastern France, before we knew it. Alsace ("Elsass" in German) is roughly the shape of an oblique rectangle about 25 mi east-west and 100 mi north-south, whose SE corner is approximately Basel. The Rhein separates Alsace from Germany, on the east side of the river. We were making really good speed and feeling quite optimistic, though still cautious, as the path veered away from the Rhein and through the dense forests of the Bois de something or forêt du something - I can't remember what the signs said and can't find it on the internet. Then we left the forests and started town-hopping through small several-kilometer-separated hamlets. A few hours later, we determined that the French side was the wrong side if one wanted to get to Freiburg, Germany. Duhh! Unfortunately, the next bridge was far to the north, forcing us to cross at Breisach, then forge a south-westerly route around some hills. Before we got there a French guy told us to hit the highway instead of the EU bike path we were on - that it would be far faster. Instead, we got lost in a cornfield near Nambsheim. Luckily, we were able to correlate a steeple with an icon on the map and ended up wasting only 30 minutes.
The rest of the day was very stressful, I felt like we were trying to beat the clock to get to Freiburg before dusk. We were exhausted when we finally arrived (right before dusk) and as luck would have it, the girl was not home. and probably not much fun for the dinner party that greeted us. Brent complained of knee pain but there was nothing we could do about it.
(NOT FINISHED)
DAY 2 FREIBURG to STRASBOURG (110km)
We got up and I met Brent at the appointed hour in front of his host's apartment - maybe 9AM. We hit the road out of Freiburg heading westward, back toward Mother Rhein. I don't know what spirits we were in at that time, but probably determination mixed with apprhension. It was a little chilly but the briskness made the biking comfortable. We really tore up those 25-30km for the first hour and a half or so. Our first major break was after we passed under the bridge that crosses the Rhein separating Neuf Brisach (F) and Breisach am Rhein (DE). The going was slower today along the Rhein, due to a strong head-wind. This was pretty demoralizing. Also, at about midday, we took a detour on what turned out to be a peninsula running parallel to the Rhein bank for a few km before revealing its true dead-end nature. I had a feeling that the path had become too rough, but we had to see it through to the agonizing climax - reaching the tip of the peninsula, staring out at the Rhein along 3-sides, hopes of immediate further progress to the north dashed.
At Nonnenweier we forced a crossing of the Rhein (well, we actually used a bridge). In retrospect I wonder if this was near any of the bridges that Julius Caesar had built in order to threaten Germanic tribes east of the Rhein with punitive incursions. Below, a model of such a bridge from the Deutsches Museum of Munich.
Unlike Caesar, we enjoyed a tasty snack from the Bratwurst vendor located on the causeway. This lifted spirits somewhat, but the headwinds were brutal along the causeway and we were really tired. As soon as we got into France, we made our way inland toward Krafft (near Erstein), escaping the headwind along a canal road that leads directly to Strasbourg. I think there were less than 20km to go to Strasbourg at that point, and when we realized that it would be along a scenic, wind-sheltered canal path, our spirits lifted once again.
DAY 3 STRASBOURG to KARLSRUHE (80km)
Went through a park. Crossed at Gambsheim(?).
DAY 4 KARLSRUHE to MANNHEIM (80km)