Day 20 Septemeber 12

 Day 20, September 12, 2012, Trier to Zell, 70 miles, total mileage:586.2

Wool sock alert.  It was only 10C when we left Trier this morning.  The day continued cool and overcast.  It spritzed a few times but no real  rain.  After a difficult start (wrong turns, crummy surface) we were finally on our way.  Then we had to stop for this train/engine fix.  Paul and the engineer had an odd German/English "I've been working on the railroad" conversation and then we were off.

 Getting ready to go over the bridge in the background, we spied this van that had VBT on the side.  I insisted that it had to be a Vermont Bicycle Tour, so we went to investigate.  Sure enough, we met Kristen who directs the Bike and Barge on the Mosel River for VBT.  She is from Vermont.  After a lively conversation about bicycle touring, we continued on our way.

 This is an example of our views for today.  The Mosel is in the bottom of the valley.  There are endless grapevines beside us and all the way up the hill across the river.  The only place that there are no vines is in the small village along the river.

 As you may have noticed in many of our pictures, the hills are very steep.  This handy little contraption moves a person and equipment or grapes straight up and then down the hillside.  Simple but impressive.

This is the Burg Landshut which is a 13th century castle on a mountainside overlooking Bernkastel.  We opted not to go up and visit since we were traveling so far today.

Geese, swans, snails, cows, people from Vermont....you never know what you see along the bike path and the river. I found the boat oar attached to the pontoon an interesting addition.

Every village has a church which is very obvious in its skyline.  This one is remarkable because it looks like its a Kinsley church-our Pennsylvania friends will understand this.

The Mosel River is an incredibly serpentine river.  It keeps turning back and forth.  This was the view about a mile south of Zell, our destination for the night.  The bike path was very close to the river in this section.

 This black cat greeted everyone who entered town from the south, east or west.  This region is all about the wine.

 Seventy miles later and all day we reached the Sabine Guesthouse.  Some days you really llok forward to a hot shower and this was one of those days.  As we traveled from Trier to Zell the views just continued to impress.

After an incredibly delicious dinner at Schatzkammer Weintube, we wandered around the village on the east side of the river.  We finished the day with a glass of wine and yes, we are tired.