The Eifel Mountains

• By admin
• August 10, 2016
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Schalkenmehren volcanic lake

After one night on a very expensive site in Frankfurt where you even had to pay for a black plastic bin liner for your rubbish we headed to the Eifel mountains where we were due to meet up with an old friend of Graeme’s and afterwards spend a week with Amy & Lynne.

We drove to our prearranged meeting place, a busy a village in the Vulkaneifel region called Schalkenmehren (or some version of that). John had arranged for us to pitch our two vans in the grounds of a friend who owned a light engineering works in the village. We were to park a week here with its views of the Eifel mountains in one direction and a series busy engineering workshops in the other. We had the use of a very clean bathroom and all the cycle paths you could wish for. John’s friend, Edith & Martin, generously looked after us, bringing wine on the first night and doing my washing and ironing (!) during the week.

We were well settled into our workshop pitch by the time Amy & Lynne arrived at 1.30am on Saturday morning. Thankfully they too were very happy with this slightly odd arrangement and we were soon to share many a beer, barbeque and bike ride in the following week.

Wine tasting commences

One such bike ride took us on a 55km route from Daun to  Berkastel, a town on the Moselle river. This route had the added bonus of returning by ‘bike bus, a system where buses with large bike trailers drove you back to the starting point. This picturesque route had been created from a disused railway line, (it seems Herr Beeching got everywhere) mainly downhill or flat it was an enjoyable three-hour cycle followed by an even more enjoyable wine tasting afternoon. We tried to be very objective and discerning about the wines, but rapidly our judgement declined till we eventually thought them the best wines ever and how much we loved each other!!

Weaving our way to the bus station to collect our bikes and catch the bike bus back, we were taken aback to find that you had to book your place on the bus in advanced and the only options were to cycle the 55Km back uphill or stay the night. Sobriety and desperation kicked in!  After much pleading we found a bus driver who took pity on us and although he wasn’t going to our village he would drop us off somewhere nearby. It was good enough for us!

Moselle Bike Bus