Cochem - Beilstein

Thursday 23 May

Our only commitment this morning was breakfast between 8am and 9.30am.  There was another couple there – German – with better English than my German but still not conversational.  The highlight of the morning was Caelli’s demonstration of a wombat and its activities!

The weather was very cold and drizzly.  We decided to take the boat to Beilstein (bile-shtine), look around for a couple of hours then boat back downstream.  In the interim, there was time to catch the falconry show at Reichsburg Castle above Cochem.  We walked up the hill (which has been described as a 15 minute huff-and-puff!) only to be told that the birds wouldn’t be flying because it was too wet.  We had a look at them anyway.

The castle was pretty nice...

...and the views of Cochem from up there were really good.

This left us plenty of time to catch the 12pm boat.  However, the boat people had cancelled two of the four trips, which meant that we would have only half an hour in Beilstein.  We decided to catch the bus instead.  We got to Beilstein around 12.45 and started looking for somewhere to have lunch. 

We settled on a cafe that had soup and bread for around EU 4.  Nice timing – it was now raining quite heavily.  We were prepared to stay there until the boat left if necessary, but it cleared up a bit so we went walking. 

Above Beilstein there is an old castle which is ruined – it was destroyed by the French in 1688.  The French destroyed just about everything along the Mosel in 1688.  The views from up there are pretty spectacular. 

Thankfully the rain held off (I’m not counting drizzle as rain) and we got to the boat 10 minutes before departure.

It was lovely and warm inside; however, the best views were on the open top deck in the freezing cold.  We all went up there when we came to the lock.  We had to wait for a barge to come through before we could use it.  The barge was 110 metres long, 11.5 metres wide and weighed 4,000 tonnes!

Then it was our turn.  We stood at the back to watch the barrier being raised.

Then the front gates opened.

We sat inside the boat, watching the vineyards go by.  They grow vines on any surface short of vertical here.  A lot of vineyards are on a 40-45% gradient, and the steepest is on an 80% gradient!  This photo doesn’t really show just how steep this patch of vines really was.

We arrived in Cochem around 4.15pm.  It’s such a pretty town.

A quick trip home to grab the computer, then off to find an internet cafe.  We have no internet access at all in our accommodation in Germany, so that’s a whole week.  Apologies for the lateness of posts.  We had to eat something whilst using the wifi.

Afternoon sunshine!!  Still freezing, though.  That’s Phil by the water’s edge, underneath the church.

We also had a quick look at St Martin’s church.  This is the church with the onion dome in all the photos of Cochem.  It had very modern stained glass windows inside.