Tuesday 7th July – Week 4 – Rhine and Moselle

Right, so here's some things I need to understand about Germany. What's with the cash? This is one of the most advanced societies on the planet, producing some of the best engineered products and I can't pay for a restaurant meal with a credit card. I knew it was like that in the 90's, but really expected that it would have changed in the ensuing 15 years. What made it worse, was that neither of the banks in Bacharach would accept our ATM cards, so we were worried that we wouldn't be able to get any cash. On second thoughts, Bacharach is like some tiny kiwi town, so if you rock into town with your fancy pants bank card, don't be surprised if all they've got is PSIS and the local credit union. We resolved the cash shortage problem today at the next town, but going into the bank was like going into a bank 20 years ago. There was an ATM, another machine that appeared to enable people to make specific payments – like for the electricity and then in the main part of the bank, 3 woman working on computers who looked like they were typing up the ledgers. Despite the neon lights out front, it all seemed very backwards.

After breakfast and a brief walk around Bacharach (it was raining), we headed down the Rhine to the town of St Goar – where we found the bank. St Goar is another tourist town, with a pretty main street full of shops selling a range of tourist tat – cuckoo clocks, beer steins, plastic knights and soldiers, knives etc. The stuff that we'd never wanted before we still didn't want and the stuff that we did like, we'd already got, so after a look around we headed on to Boppard.

There is a cycle track (about 8 feet wide and asphalt) all the way along the Rhine and the Moselle that we have traveled on so far, and although the weather has been decidedly marginal, there is a constant stream of cyclists (mostly of retirement age) riding up and down the river. They are usually accompanied by a bus or some sort of support vehicle and they cruise from town to town stopping at the local cafe's and restaurants. The track is generally slightly downhill, as it follows the course of the river and this is the way that you find most of the riders riding. Helmets aren't compulsory in France and Germany and most people don't wear them, which surprises me as an experienced crasher. Cycling is the latest form of transport to be added to the river's repertoire, and accompanies the barges, cruise boats, cars, trucks and trains that were already storming up and down on or beside the river.

Boppard was a bigger town, which we really liked. It's about 20ks from Koblenz, which is the convergence point of the Rhine, Moselle and the Lahn rivers, so would be a good base for exploring the Rhine. We had however decided to get back into camping, and had chosen another campground on the other side of the Rhine in a town called Lahnstein, so we headed off there to check it out. We got there at 2pm, but the office was closed until 3pm. The campground was set on the top of a hill beside a castle overlooking the town. It was a superb site, but not wanting to hang around for an hour, we headed down into the town and then decided to head down the river on the opposite side to that which we'd come up. As we headed into town, we decided that the town wasn't very nice – it was a bit industrial, then as we headed down the road and got stuck by yet another lot of road works, we decided that the Rhine itself was pretty industrial with all those barges constantly going up and down the river and trains along beside the river. We also decided the Rhine was full of daytrippers and tourist tat – great to have seen it but no need to stay any longer.

It was at this point, that the rain started and we decided that firstly, camping was out for the night and secondly, that it was time that we headed to the quieter waters and the Moselle sounded like a better option than the very busy Rhine. We were on the wrong side of the river for the Moselle, but there are ferries that cross he river at many points so we caught one of these small car ferries for the 3 minute trip (3 minutes, $EUR4.50) and yes, Anne did pay the ferryman before we got to the other side. Jane then took us on one of her back road direct trips, that had us winding our way through the forest and the hill country between the Rhine and the Moselle. Most of the road was single lane, two-way, so it was good that there was a couple of cars ahead of us to lead the way.

The Moselle was lovely and much less busy and also less industrially oriented. For a start, there were no trains and no barges and the towns were much smaller. There was a similar number of vines stretching up the sides of the valley on either side of the river. Many of the vineyards have cog type railways (think of a wellington cable car and your pretty much there), which wind there way up the sides of the valley. The Moselle also had lots of campgrounds right beside the river, but the German style seems to be to just have a fairly open paddock, where all the campers and caravans just park up for the night. The several that we saw did not have a single tent in them, so that, there general appearance and the regular showers were enough to have us heading for a hotel for the night.

Cochem is one of the main towns on the river and we chose a hotel there to spend the night, with Carpaccio and Pizza making a welcome return to the menu. Cochem is spread over both sides of the river and the restaurant we chose was on the other side from our hotel and had a great view of the village and the castle on the hill.