2020-09-22 (Tue). Zell am Mosel and Traben-Trarbach by bike.

The day of the long bike ride…

The Stellplatz seems ok. It looks like it’s a recent extension from the Stellplatz on the other side of the road, which is where the payment machine is. Between the two Stellpllätze, there must be over 50 spaces. And there’s another Stellplatz/campsite on the other end of the town, along the Mosel. Where we are – in Zell-Kainmt – is close to the main road bridge that crosses over to Zell Zentrum, so there is some traffic noise from trucks going over there & down the opposite river bank road.

It looks like grape harvesting is in full swing: mini-tractors with trailers are going past the whole day long, from mid-morning.

We set off on our bikes around 11:30 to follow the radweg down as far as Traben-Trabach. We had no idea what’s at Traben-Trarbach, but it was the next decent sized town along the river, S of where we are. It’s another hot, dry day, though not as hot as it has been of late. Probably only around 25°C.

It’s pretty much tarmac all the way, with the last few km acutally on a road, for goodness sake! A quiet road, it has to be said. My GPS measured it at just under 20km.

T-T was very busy. Not as busy as it would be in a non-Covid year, but many of the places that would normally be open weren’t. There are no cruise ships going along the Mosel, and neither did I see a single commercial/industrial type barge the whole 2 days we were on the Mosel. There were queues of people waiting to get into every cafe/bar/Gaststätte along the waterfront. We went up into the town and Joy spotted a small hotel with Biergarten. Perfect.

Radler & pommes for Joy. Hefeweizen & Zwiebelkuchen for me. And very nice too.

The trouble with flat, level paths like these radwege is that one’s bum tends to get very sore with being in the saddle the whole time. We were both suffering somewhat in the undercarriage department by the time we got back to Zell. We had considered taking the “bus-train” that runs between Traben & Bulay, but the nearest stop to Zell is at Reil, and we’d just missed one train and would have had to wait almost an hour for the next one.

Link to Strava stats here.