Scenic full day drive from Bacharach & return?
 

After lots of wonderful advice and researching your suggestions, we are now down to the 'nitty gritty' planning of our September trip.

As I've said due to FF points we are flying into/out of Dusseldorf, we have four weeks to explore some German towns along the Rhein and French villages in the Champagne and Dijon area's. We arrive early am into Dusseldorf and will collect hire car and drive to Bacharach where we have two nights booked. Arrival day will purely be the drive to Bacharach and exploring the town. i.e. immersing ourselves into the local food and wine (suggestions most welcome Altes Haus sounds wonderful) and enjoying this town.

We will then have the next day free to go exploring, more local towns, heading to Rudesheim as a must. We have driven quite a bit in Germany previously and just love finding cute small towns. I'd love to hear a driving loop suggestion from and back to Bacharach for the day. If you suggested a 'must do' lunch place that would be awesome.

Thanks as always.

I like Eltville a whole lot more than Rüdesheim. Prettier and no souvenir stores selling crap made in China.
Only 10 min. drive south of Rüdesheim, you have lots of half-timbered houses, schloss with a dry moat filled with rose bushes, wineries, and Eberbach Monastery is near-by.
Have lunch on the terrace of the Gelbe Haus in Eltville. Lovely panoramic view of the Rhine.

"Arrival day will purely be the drive to Bacharach and exploring the town. i.e. immersing ourselves into the local food and wine..."

Suggest a wet suit, heh.

More seriously, if it wouldn't be too stressful, I'd suggest taking a cruise that same afternoon. Train to Bingen (15 min.) and board a northbound cruise boat to St. Goar. This relaxed 1.5-hour cruise shows you the Rhine castles and topography from a unique perspective. Take the train back to Bacharach (10 min.) Last cruise from Bingen is at 16:30. The train tickets are essentially paid for by the cruise discount you get for having arrived by train - don't discard those train tickets before reaching the boat dock in Bingen.

Sorry, no driving route as I always use the trains these days... some towns to visit:

Braubach (Marksburg Castle)
Winningen
Cochem
Beilstein

perfect......thank you

Aussiedreamer we spent a week using Cochem as our base. Loved the Mosel such a lovely river and lots of the cute smaller towns rather than the much larger Rhine.
Reading above I see you have decided to stay in Bacharach. We drove from Cochem to Bacharach and spent a night there, a very cute town. The afternoon that we arrived we caught a ferry up to Koblenz, which gave us a nice view of the river and towns and castles along the way. We then caught a train back.

Eltville, idstein, Limburg, Nassau, Bad Ems