First Bike Tour of the Season

Germany is great for biking: Even minor rivers usually have well developed bike trails running their length, often along with a railway line. So you can just hop on the train with your bike and hop of at any point to cycle along the river shore for a stretch. And that’s exactly what we did for the Acenscion Day long weekend: We took the train to Leun on the river Lahn (a 246-km tributary of the Rhine) and cycled 60 km downriver to Dietz, where we stayed in a hostel that is housed in the local castle.

The next day we got as far as the original Nassau town, where my bike broke down. So we hopped on the train to Bad Ems (famous for the Ems Dispatch) where the next bike repair shop was located (this is rural Germany for you: Trains, but no bike shops). However, getting the bike fixed took so long that we called it a day and just took the train back home.

The original plan was to go to where the Lahn empties into the Rhine and then take the train upriver from there past the Loreley. That is one of Germany’s most scenic train routes and would have spared us the slightly deppressing experience of backtracking a days worth of riding in just under an hour.

Below you see some general impressions, the family pictures are here