Cochem Experts - Help Please!
 

I was fine tuning my (2) nights in Cochem this weekend. I came up with a couple of questions regarding Cochem.

~ I came upon 2 threads that each mentioned a different way to get from Cochem to Burg Eltz. The first being parking at (forgive me as I've forgotten the exact name .. starts with an M.. I believe it's the parking lot) and hiking uphill a good 1 to 2 miles and secondly, the Rick Steves way which is to ignore the signs to the Burg Eltz and somehow you end up parking and walking downhill to Burg Eltz.

The questions I have:
1. Is it really a 1 to 2 mile hike to Burg Eltz from the main parking lot? If so, is it through a wooded forest?

2. Is it possible to bike to Burg Eltz (or this main parking lot I've seemed to forget the name of) from Cochem?

~Beilstein
1. I've read you can drive there or take a boat (1 hour each way). Is it possible to bike to Beilstein? If so, roughly how long?

~Is it easy to rent bikes in Cochem?

I'm really trying to fit a bike ride into our 2 nights there and trying to figure out when to do it and what will be the nicest scenic route.

We are staying at the Alte Thorenschenke and will have a rental car.
We plan on doing:
~Burg Eltz
~Beilstein: Walk around and enjoy
~Cochem: Walk around and enjoy
~Bike Ride:

Looking forward to everyones replies!

I haven't rented a bike in Cochem or biked from there, but...

This page (in German) shows a zoom-map (bottom of page) of a recommended biking area upriver from Cochem where I have biked. This is a particularly scenic area, easy to bike. It shows bike rentals (Fahrradverleih) in Bullay at the train station and also in Zell. Zell is recommended as a good spot to do some whine tasting. The Restaurant Cafe Marienburg listed on this page isn't on the bike path but is a great little place up on the ridge in the middle of the river bend - a delightful place you can hike to fairly easily with a magnificent view of the river valley on either side.


http://www.mosel-reisefuehrer.de/wan...andernC32.html


This page has a list of bike rental shops all along the Mosel. Cochem is absent from this list for some reason. I rented at the Nicolay shop (inconspicuous little place) in Alf, a ferry-ride across the river from Bullay.

mosel.com/pages2/0302_rad_d.jsp?id=8473&dom=de

It is a 45-min walk - maybe 2 miles - from the Moselkern railway station to Burg Eltz. I can't imagine the Eltz parking lot is that far!!! The hike is pretty easy, first through town and then through the forest, beautiful walk, stunning when the castle first appears on the horizon. Not sure about biking there. If you drive, you can take a car up to the Ringersteiner Mühle restaurant in Moselkern and hike from there to make the walk shorter.

Hope this helps.

There are several different ways to get to Burg Eltz. We took the "Death March" route. Parked at some out of the way restaurant and then trudged sooooooo far. It was quite hilly and signage wasn't great, though we did finally make it.

Of course, the temperature was over 90 F. that day. I was so tired and dehydrated that I didn't tour the castle. Just sat in the shade and drank lots of water. Mrs. Fly did the tour in spite of a very bad headache and sopping wet clothing resulting from her "glowing" on the trek. (Grammie told me that 'Horses sweat; men perspire; women glow.')

This was the part of the trip where, when I was researching and planning in March, Mrs. Fly had said something like "Oh, Rufie, you always spend so much time researching and planning. Why don't we just wing it for the last few days of the trip and see what happens?"

Took us a couple of days to recover from that fiasco. I'm in the process of very deep in-depth research and planning for our upcoming trip in July/August.

We were there last summer with a car and followed Rick Steves directions.. very easy! There was about a 1/4 "hike" after parked to get to the castle. Very steep downhill, and then back up again, but I didn't think it was too bad at all :)

Thanks everyone for the helpful info.

Mr Fly, your wife sounds like my husband "let's be adventurous and wing it" and that is precisely why I am researching. We are pretty active and in our early 30's so I think we would like the hike but I still want to know what I'm in for. :)

Russ, thank you for including the sites .. I will research this tonight after work.

TXgalinGA, it sounds like the hike you are referring to is the shorter one I've been reading about .. which is the Rick Steve's route. This may be an option too!

Don't know about the other route, but the Rick Steves route gives you some beautiful photo ops of Burg Eltz as you walk toward the castle from the parking lot.

We stayed in the same hotel on our last trip to Cochem in 1997. Nice place.

If you make it to ZELL, look for a small stone building that welcomes tour busses for wine tasting. The owner is very nice. My wife and I have stopped there 2 times over the years and have enjoyed it both times. He usually has an American flag waving out front. The winerey looks small but goes into a hillside.

You can rent a bike at the K-D Boat kiosk at the dock and it takes about an hour to bike to Beilstein. You can then take the boat back or bike back. There is a bike path that follows the river. We plan on doing the reverse from Beilstein to Cochem but I think I told you that in your last post.

Lily, yes, I did go back to my other post and noticed the bit about the rental bike. :) I must have missed it while reading the 1st time.

Traveldawg, I'd love to visit Zell but we'll be getting into Cochem early afternoon (hopefully before 12:00) and we are only staying 2 nights. Is it possibly on the way to Rothenburg? We haven't decided yet how to drive from Cochem to Rothenburg so that may be an option. We prefer the backroads versus the main highways.

Thanks again!

This is the Burg Eltz trail that we took--I don't recommend it on a hot or otherwise inclement day.

"From the hiking car park "Müdener Berg" (reachable by car via Müden) along the sometimes very steep hills (About 45 minutes) Warning: Only for experienced hikers!" From the Burg Eltz website: http://www.burg-eltz.de/e_index.html

Thank you Mr. Fly! That is perfect information!! I'm leaning more towards doing this hike ... weather permitting. Hopefully the trail will have nice photo opportunities.

Burg Eltz has two parking areas. The first one entails the longer hike. However, there is also a parking area right above the castle. From this lot, you hike down a fairly steep hill to the castle. There is a shuttle service, back up the hill, for a small fee, if you don't want to walk back up.

Regarding renting bikes in Cochem: Contact the Alte Thorschenke and ask them if they can reserve bikes for you or if they can give you contact information for bike rentals. We love this hotel and the managment is wonderful. They should be more than eager to help you secure bike rentals.

Taking a boat to/from Beilstein: Make sure the boat you're on stops at Beilstein. On our last trip, we just hopped a boat, with Beilstein on it's itinerary, but it never stopped there.

Even if biking you may want to park your bike at the Moselkern parking lot and hike from there as if not experienced biker you may struggle more on the uphill road to Burg Eltz - in any case the trek is well worth it to see this gorgeous castle, one of the very few on the Rhine and Mosel not ruined thru the ages - many were knocked down by Napoleon it seems but this one persevered. As for Mosel biking, i believe the best bike trip is between Cochem and Beilstein. I conducted bike tours over the Mosel for 10 years and everyone raved about biking here in one of Europe's most scintillatingly scenic areas. Winds in this natural wind tunnel can be bad though and they often blow downstream toward Koblenz.

We rented bikes in Cochem last summer at the KD kiosk near the town square. It is near the tourist information booth- they can point it out to you. Easier than going across the river. The biking is easy and beautiful- we spent a week on the Mosel biking around. The easiest way to Beilstein is to bike along the same side of the river as Cochem. then take the ferry across. We tried biking from Beilstein to Cochen on the Beilstein side of the river once - marked as a bike trail - but for much of the way it was along a highway.We did not reserve the bikes, and they had a good number available, but found that rental places are going out of business in Kobelnz and other places on the river, so reserve if possible.

SuzlnOhio, thank you for the bike rental information. Very helpful. I was wondering which side to bike on!!! Thanks!

bookmarking