Visiting Mette and family in Nuglar, Switzerland

Mette & Patrick and family

Mette's house with solar panels

Phil, the archers apprentice

Enjoying Mette and Patrick's great food

Mette is a very old good friend of Iren's since kindergarten days in Nottodden. Mette and Patrick have created a house and garden that attempt to be as energy efficient and eco friendly as possible. It looks like they have made a great success of this! The roof is covered in solar panels, the rain water is collected in huge tanks in the cellar that is used for flushing the toilet, washing clothes and watering the garden. They have tasty fresh eggs from their hens (an old and seldom breed of Swiss hen - Appenzeller Spitzhauben) and have planted several rare plants. Mette's son is very keen on using his bow and arrows and taught Phil how to do it. For those of you who are experts you will see that Phil's right arm is too high. The highest temperatures of the year were attained (34C) whilst visiting so it was good to relax in the garden and visit the local "swimbad" where we all swam in the Rhein. We had a lovely time visiting and enjoyed Patrick's excellent cooking with most of the ingredients home grown and Mette's delicious plum and pear pies. Thank you for your hospitality!

Strasbourg to Basel

We've now spent a week cycling in the Alsace region of France which is just on the west side of the Rhine. We have never been here before and didn't know what to expect. Mette and Nina had suggested that this would be a better alternative than cycling the southern part of the Rhine. (We are currently visiting Mette and her family in Basel). Alsace is incredibly picturesque. It is dotted with lovely villages, one after another separated by vineyards. Last year Alsace produced about 140 million bottles of wine. The villages date from the middle ages and are characterized by half timber buildings with lots of flowers everywhere. The cycling was fairly easy for most of the time with gently rolling green hills and vineyards.

Strasbourg was our first stop after taking a slow train with 3 changes from Frankfurt. Strasbourg was a pleasant surprise with its canals and old half timber buildings. The Hotel was cheap and we soon discovered why; it still had the dust from the middle ages on the floor;-) The impresive gothic cathedral has a Light and Sound show in the evening during the summer months. It was a wonderful display. The video shows a short example.

After Strasbourg we headed out in to the all the small villages and vineyards. Our first stop was in Obernai. Obernai is one of the prettiest towns in the area and much frequented by tourists, but it still has less of a touristy feel than many of the other quaint towns and villages. We stayed in a neat campsite just outside the town.

The food is good, but it's heavy and with a German influence. A traditional dish is Tarte Flambe which is similar to pizza, but the crust is much thinner.  It is typically filled with cream, onions and bacon. Another one is Baeckeoffe which is meat, potatoes and other vegetables served in a terracotta casserole. The meat is marinated overnight and cooked for several hours in the oven. 

Most of the cycling has been fairly easy so far. We hope to cycle in Switzerland and then over the Alps to Itlay. This means some serious uphill cycling and so Iren was adamant that we needed to have a test with all the baggage on the bikes. Therefore, after Obernai we headed up to Haute Köeningsbourg (the castle at the top of the hill in the picture on the left), a 700 meter climb! It was very hot (about 28C) and it took us almost 2 hours but we made it at last thanks to the granny gear on the bikes. Now Iren feels ready for anything!

On the way in to Kaysersberg

The picture on the right was a typical sight as we cycled into many villages through the vineyards.

Iren got a good dose of inspiration after we visited the Albert Schweitzer Museum in his birthplace of Kaysersberg. He received the Nobel Peace prize in 1952 for, amongst other things, his work in establishing and running a hospital in Gabon.

Iren with Albert

Colmar's "Little Venice"

After several more kilometers of scenic villages, vineyards, sweat and coffee shops we made it to Colmar, which for many is the end of the Alsace Wine Route.

The last night in Alsace was in the next town of Mulhouse that actually turned into two nights as we both had a "bad stomach" after eating, well actually we're not sure what it was but it must have been something that we both ate!

Enjoying a rest

The day after we took it easy and chose to take the train to Basel instead of cycling. We arrived in Basel and then took a local train to Nuglar to visit Mette and her family for a few days. 

Leaving Frankfurt

We're leaving Nina and Frankfurt today and will take the train to Strasbourg. This means that we leave the Rhine for a few days and cycle instead south in the Alsace valley parallel to the Rhine. We'll join the Rhine again somewhere before Basel.

Starting to cycle down the Rhine

The bikes survived the flight and after about an hour they were ready for a bit of sight seeing in Dusseldorf. The evening ended in an Italian restaurant where, with no exaggeration, we ate the best pasta we have ever had!

The next morning it was time to load the bikes for the first time. As you can see, there are several bags that need to be taken on and off the bikes each evening and carried back and forth. After having done this for a few days we now have a good routine and can load up fairly quickly.

The picture below shows us at the start of our cycle tour up the Rhine. ("Up" since we're going in the opposite direction of the flow of the river).

Our experience so far is that the cycling is easy even with fully laden bikes. Almost anyone will be able to manage cycling the Rhine and if it's done without taking camping equipment then it would be even easier. So far we can highly recommend it. There are many picturesque villages to stop and look at like Zons, Bacharach and Rüdesheim. This is the high season but there seems to be plenty of rooms available in the various Gästehause and Pensions. (They all seem to cost about 65 euros (kr 500) for a double room and breakfast)

We have cycled less than we had thought since we have been stopping to cycle around the villages and relaxing sat outside the cafes testing the many varieties of cakes and ice creams. Therefore we have put the bikes on the train twice. Once to get from Cologne to Koblenz and one from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt.

The weather during the first week has been very mixed. At times it has been lovely with blue skies and about 28C and at others with really heavy rain. So far we have only used our new tent once. We bought it last year since our previous 2 man tent seemed to get smaller each time we used it. This one is a 3 man tent with a bigger area for storing the bags between the inner and outer tent. As we were putting the tent up in a camp site at Spay it started to rain very lightly. We just got the last peg in the ground when the thunder and lightning started with a huge downpour. So our tent was properly christened and at least stood the test by not letting any water in. This is how the first night in a new tent should be!

This was a lovely alley of trees on the way in to Cologne. Most of the time the tracks are only for bikes and walkers so it is generally car free.






The picture of Iren is in Rüdesheim that we got to by tacking a ferry over to the other side of the Rhine from Bingen. The video is a short clip taken on the way to Bingen.

This is the Siegfrieds Mechanisches Musikkabinett in Rüdesheim. One of the many typical buildings in Rüdesheim that looks like this.

Enjoying dinner on Nina's terrace.

We are currently in Kronberg on the outskirts of Frankfurt visiting Nina, a friend of Iren's from when they lived in Notodden. Kronberg is a lovely place and there are lots of things to see in the nearby area. We have enjoyed Nina's hospitality, spacious flat and good cooking even though she claims to be allergic to kitchens. It has been great to meet up again and find out how she is doing. Thank you so much, Nina!

Departure

We had a busy couple of weeks preparing everything. We went on a test drive up to Röa that went surprisingly well considering all the luggage. We were pleasantly suprised at the speed we could get up (along the flat). Ann Kristin (Iren´s sister) and the family organized a farewell dinner around at Iren´s parents. It was nice to see them all before leaving the next day.

Our flight left at 07:05 which meant we had to leave the house at  03:30 and since we didn't get to bed until 01 we were rather pleased that Torfinn (Iren's brother in-law) offered to drive us to the bus stop.

At the airport we were pleasantly surprised to be sent off by two of Phil's work colleagues, Hanna and Roy, who helped us as we checked in the bikes in their cardboard boxed and all the other luggage.
The flight went well and the bikes were unharmed when we put them together again in Dusseldorf at the very friendly Schäfer Gästehaus.