We Set Sail on the Rhine

Today was the day to formally begin stage one of our adventure. Our home for the next week will be the MS Andante, a large passenger "barge" able to carry around 80 passengers. Our Ghostrider group constitutes about 25% of the total, the rest are mainly German speaking so I don't think that we will be able to do much socialising with them.

Over the next week we will be moving south along the Rhine till we reach the city of Basel. Each day consists of a mixture of cruiisng the river and riding our bikes. The schedule means that we are always back on the boat for our evening meal.

Yesterday afternoon the boat cruised from Mainz to Gernshein where we moored for the evening. Today we began with another short cruise to Mannheim. That was the cue to unload the bikes (and it is quite an undertaking to unload around 70 of them) and begin our day's ride.

The cycling was quite easy with numerous stops along the way. The main stop was the famous city of Heidelberg. Entry to the city was via a huge ornamental gateway. We were very impressed by the beautiful old city centre and arrived to find the entire central square was filled with colourful tables and umbrellas.

After exploring Heildelberg, we resumed our ride to Speyer, our destination for the day.Read more