Spanning 1,450km from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps, the Rhine Cycle Route is 87% car-free, culturally rich and surprisingly accessible. This article, by Nicholas Hellen, caught my fancy for two reasons: The first was the grandeur of the idea and the second was his comment that most of the cyclists he met were on “E-bikes” – I might manage that!!
“I blame Eurostar. And the airlines. It’s precisely because they make it so fiendishly tricky to transport a bicycle into Europe that I found myself pedalling the length of the Rhine for 1,450km (900 miles) from the Hook of Holland on the North Sea to the river’s source high in the Swiss Alps.
Let me explain. My plan had been to join a friend cycling across the French Alps, starting on the southern shores of Lake Geneva and finishing at Nice on the Riviera. But the logistics of getting my road bike there – and home again – defeated me. So, I decided to ride it there instead.
In my Google search for quiet, car-free routes from London to Switzerland, I stumbled upon the Rhine Cycle Route, or EV15 – the first certified section of the remarkable 99,000km (61,515 mile) EuroVelo cycling network that is intended to criss-cross Europe by 2030. It already links locations as far flung as Trondheim in Norway to Santiago de Compostela in Spain and is likely to unleash tremendous interest in cycle tourism when it is completed. The Rhine route represents a milestone: 87% car-free, meticulously way-marked and open to everyone from Lycra-clad purists to families on e-bikes.
I was immediately intrigued. I could picture myself whizzing along the banks of the River Rhine on smooth tarmac, drinking in the myth and romance of a landscape contested since Roman times. But there would be many other highlights along the way: the Dutch polders, side-trips to the Alsace Wine Route, the historic wooden bridges upstream of Basel, the Rhine Falls, Lake Constance, and, finally, the official source of the river.
Unused to cycling with luggage, I vowed to travel light with one bag attached to my handlebars and a second to my saddle, weighing around 6kg (13lbs) in total. That meant wearing Lycra and carrying just one set of “civilian” clothing. Using a road bike with skinny 25mm tyres meant I would have a bumpy ride, but I judged it worth sacrificing comfort for speed. It would also be my first solo adventure in more than 30 years.
I had only 10 days to spare so would ride 145km (90 miles) per day, staying in reasonably priced hotels and hostels, rather than camping. I later learned that it doesn’t have to be an ordeal – at least half of the long-distance tourers I saw on the route were riding e-bikes.
Where better to start than in the Netherlands, a cycling nation since the 1970s when a popular movement led to the country’s roads being redesigned for bikes. At the Hook of Holland, where vast Stena Line ferries disgorge their passengers from Harwich, I gazed expectantly across the canalised expanse of the Rhine to the open sea. It was a sunny day in late August, and the beaches were busy.
Beautifully wide cycle tracks led me to Rotterdam, and I tucked in behind some speedy e-bike riders to shield me from the headwind. It took a while to adjust to the road rules in a country where the cyclist is king: it’s no wonder that back in Britain, after Dutch-style roundabouts were built in places like Hemel Hempstead and Cambridge, a council had to issue a “how to” guide on YouTube.
It swiftly became clear that I had seriously misjudged the difficulty of covering such a long distance each day, and on the first night arrived exhausted at my hotel, east of Dordrecht, at 20:00. Although it was a Monday night, a wedding party was in full swing. Josephine at reception smiled and said: “Don’t worry, they won’t keep you up late. We’re in the Bible Belt here.” It was a conservative Calvinist gathering, and she was right. I was out for the count by 22:00.
During its passage through the Netherlands, the Rhine splits into several branches, forming a complex delta. On my second day, pedalling upstream, I crossed one vast tributary, the Waal, by ferry but also meandered for hours along the intricate dykes that protect the polders from encroachment by the ever-threatening sea.
I made it into Germany on my second day and joined the locals at the Stammtisch (regulars’ table) at my hotel, to devour a Wienerschnitzel, washed down with a Weizenbier. I then diverted slightly from the official EV15 route and rode alone through deserted fields under vast skies. The Roman site of Xanten has a reconstruction of a full-scale amphitheatre, and the town has a connection to Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied, the medieval German epic. I idled away a pleasant half hour in the shade of a giant windmill.
The clock was ticking, and it was time to raise the tempo. I powered through Duisburg, the steel capital of Germany, fascinated but also intimidated by the brutalism of its industrial heritage. Chimneys poked 250m into the sky, and I slalomed between the last twisted, rusting remnants of heavy industry. Passing through Cologne, dark clouds bore down on the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe, which looked particularly foreboding as big black clouds gathered over it. I was so wrapped up in taking photos that I was soaked when the storm broke.
It was around this point that the allure of slow travel began to pall. The EV15 route regularly dragged me along dubious paths, little more than tyre tracks across wasteland. In the Rhine Gorge, the hotel manager bore scars on her chin from a cycling accident she’d sustained on the same track earlier that week. Spotting the tiny blue signs for the EV15 could be as frustrating as catching Pokemon, and the digital GPX file on my phone often let me down. I began to wonder: wouldn’t it be more fun to drive to the best bits and skip the rest?
Then, a third of the way into the trip, I rediscovered my mojo. The Lorelei, a cliff in the heart of the Rhine Gorge, is home to the medieval legend of a siren who lures sailors to their doom on submerged rocks. The Romantic painter JMW Turner burnished the myth with his celebrated watercolour of 1817. Since then, it has remained a favourite with tourists, and I, too, was looking forward to experiencing the magic.
I left the hordes of summer campers to it and pedalled on. This is why I prefer to cycle. You do not get to pick and choose – and possibly destroy – the “best bits”. You absorb the whole landscape, and, if you are lucky, make friends along the way. That evening, I enjoyed a magical night in the boisterous resort of Rüdesheim am Rhein, where the revellers sensed that I was doing it the hard way and dragged me into their partying.
Encounters on the road were often intense, and uplifting. Riding past Mannheim towards Karlsruhe, a long-distance racer let me draft for two hours on his wheel, shouting wisecracks into his slipstream. On another occasion, I was welcomed into a nunnery during a thunderstorm. One of the sisters, Angeline, confided that the community was dying out. “You must know someone who wants to join us,” she said.
Pressure of time sadly meant I could not make a detour to the Alsace Wine Route, but I carved out a few hours to enjoy cafe society in Basel, where I began the last leg of the route in Switzerland. People of all ages slipped into their swimming costumes and floated downstream, clutching their belongings in bright fish-shaped “Wickelfisch” waterproof bags.
The stretch running 150km (93 miles) eastwards towards Lake Constance deserves to be better known. The Rhine is straddled by a series of fairytale-like wooden bridges, with the longest at Bad Sackingen. There was not enough time to do justice to the fabulous medieval town of Stein-am-Rhein, with its half-timbered houses jutting out into the street and a square surrounded by facades depicting mythological themes.
As I neared the finish line, there was another twist in store for me. For the previous 1,000km I had immersed myself in German-language culture, which I felt would unlock the secrets of the Rhine. Now high in the Swiss Alps, the route took me to one of the last redoubts of the Romansh language, descended from Vulgar Latin spoken by Roman soldiers who invaded in 15 BCE. Pausing to buy a snack, I racked my brain for my schoolboy Latin, but remained stuck on: “Veni, vidi, vici“.
I left my bicycle at the top of the Oberalp Pass, then scrambled up the lower slopes of Piz Badus mountainside for more than an hour to the river’s source, a hidden lake called Lai da Tuma. Here, at 2,345m, my accidental journey along the Rhine came to an end. I splashed water through my hands, and, as it gurgled away, watched as it began its long journey to the sea.
PLAN YOUR TRIP:
Route: The EV15 follows the Rhine for about 1,450km (900 miles), starting from the Hook of Holland and finishing at the Oberalp Pass in the Swiss Alps.
Best time to go: Between May and October for good weather and long daylight hours.
Navigation: Download EV15 GPX files and attraction maps from EuroVelo 15. The site also lists e-bike charging, repair shops and refill points.
Highlights: The Rhine Gorge and castles of the Romantic Rhine, Cologne Cathedral, Basel’s Old Town, Lake Constance and the Rhine Falls.
