Rambling in the Upper Rhine Gorge

One of the most regular travel adverts appearing on TV nowadays features various Rhine cruises – and very jolly they look too as holiday-makers sit in luxury while being awed by some of the most splendid riverine scenery in all of Europe.

Almost all the adverts – and just about any other filmed or printed material you will see relating to the most famous bit of the Rhine – will have been shot or photographed in the area around Rudesheim.

Which isn’t surprising – because the 50-mile stretch of river that flows through the heartland of Germany from this famous wine-village down to Koblenz is the most iconic of the lot. Officially, it’s known as the Upper Central Rhine Valley and it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Think long, heavily laden, barges battling against the current underneath high crags crowned by fairytale castles… Think impossibly steep vineyards topped by forests, sloping down to riverside villages that Hansel and Gretel would have felt at home in.

The first thing to say about the Rhine Gorge area is that few visitors could ever be disappointed. Just about all expectations will duly be delivered. What you thought it would be like, it is like – which might be a glib thing to say – but I make the point because, as a seasoned traveller, I know this is not always the case.

The times I’ve travelled somewhere and said out loud: “This is exactly what I thought it would be like!” I could count on one hand.

If I were to single out something which did surprise me in the Rhineland, it would be this: I expected the local Germans would be okay, in an accommodating kind of way – I didn’t expect them to be among the most warm, friendly and welcoming folk it’s been my pleasure to meet in years of travel writing. They were, but more about them later.

First let’s get away from the image of those floating Rhine holidays. Our trip to the area was land-based – and I would say we saw infinitely more, and enjoyed the region to a deeper and more profound degree, than those who were permanently afloat.

A lazy Rhine cruise looks appealing enough, but we were on a more hard-working - and rewarding - walking and cycling vacation with Ramblers Worldwide Holidays. 

During our week based in historic and attractive Rudesheim we did catch plenty of boats, which was a great pleasure in its own right. We also let amazing chair-lifts take the strain on occasions, jumped on efficient German trains and caught local buses.

It was occasionally hard work, but never exhausting. The main point of this particular holiday is to introduce you to the very best the unique area has to offer – not to route-march you relentlessly over hill or dale, or set you off on some Germanic version of the Tour de France.

So it was all fairly genteel - but highly scenic, and thoroughly enjoyable – and I fell in love with the big broad Rheingau Hills, with their huge forests, cute villages - and even with the elegant city of Wiesbaden which we visited on the one day it was raining.

The holiday in question flies you in to Frankfurt and from there you are whisked westwards aboard one of those efficient local trains. We were met at Rudesheim station by Ralph Nagler, owner of the excellent 3 star Hotel Zumgrünen Kranz in the heart of the bustling little town.

The old establishment has been in Ralph’s family for generations, and he and his cousins are also involved in the all important local wine trade – a subject upon which he is an expert.

 If you thought German wine was all about overly saccharine products that get sold cheaply over here, think again. The white wines of the Upper Central Rhine Valley area are truly delicious. Crisp, for most part with plenty of fruit, and altogether much more grown up that anything which might have a holy woman dressed in a certain colour on the label.

I took to tasting them with aplomb, which is an easy thing to do because just about every village in the wine area as a booth in one of its central squares where local winemakers take it in turns to show off their wares.  Two different winemakers were on duty in Rudesheim during my stay and their diverse offerings were all superb - my favourite was an exquisite dry bubbly that would have given any champagne a run for its money. 

But I wasn’t there to quaff wine and wade through the first-class food (first-class, that is, if you are a meat-eater – I do not envy vegetarians who visit any part of Germany). Our job was to explore as much as we could – and on the first full day we took the train on our side of the river (the east bank) downstream to the next village. 

It’s called Assmannshausen and is tucked on the far side of a big corner which the Rhine veers around in its steep gorge. The bend creates a massive shoulder of hill which is crowned by a large forest – and, basically, our day’s outing consisted of a walk back over this spur so that we could enjoy the immense views offered by its uplands.

Which you might think would mean a big climb up to reach the crest of the ridge, but it didn’t. Instead, a chair-lift of the most scenic kind (by which I mean one that wends its way over crags and through forests) took us slowly and thrillingly to the top. 

The lofty ridge is a special place for the Germans – because out on the southern edge, overlooking Rudesheim’s bit of Rhine, there is a huge 135-year-old monument that was designed to symbolise the re-establishment of the German Empire. It features a massive 120 foot high sculpture of Germania, bearing the imperial sword and the German Emperor's crown. She is apparently coated in 32 tons of bronze – and you can see its newly polished sheen for many miles around.

You could catch yet another cable car down to Rudesheim at the foot of the hill, but we strolled through endless vineyards, taking a detour over to the east of town in order to see a local monastery, where, of course, they were selling yet more wine.

The next day we took a ferry over to Bingen, which is Rudesheim’s larger more workaday neighbour and from there we pedalled (on bikes which belong to the hotel) along a superb dedicated cycle trail which hugs the riverside to Bacharach…

This is, arguably, the best known and prettiest of all the villages in the UNESCO heritage site. It’s got more history in one of its timbered houses than many old villages have got in all their cobbled acres. Apart from anything else, Bacharach was – for centuries - an important transfer point for the wine trade, as barrels were offloaded here from the smaller ships that were needed to get by the Binger Loch (a reef in the Rhine upstream near Bingen) and loaded onto bigger ones.

 Bacharach has all the usual castles, narrow streets, impossibly steep vineyards and ruined churches that you’d expect in a classic Rhine setting - and even the briefest outline of its long history would require pages.

Basically, though, you could sum up the entire story of the Upper Central Rhine Valley like this…  Over many centuries the big river evolved to be one of the most important trade routes in Europe – but in these parts geography decided to have some fun by shoving the watery thoroughfare through big hills. The steep corridor formed a pinch-point – and that caught the attention of power-brokers large and small. For he who holds the pinch-point holds great sway in the matter of either controlling the transport of goods, or in collecting taxes for those goods.

Hence all the castles that dominate this 40-mile stretch of the Rhine. Hardly a knoll or a hillside spur fails to have one, though many are now in ruins.

 On another day we cycled east along the riverside (and believe me, riverside cycling is a treat, partly for the views and partly for the lack hills to climb) to the ancient and attractive town of Eltville where I lunched on the ubiquitous bratwurst sausage, washed down with yet more lightly bubbly wine while admiring the house where Johannes Gutenburg mused over the revolutionary idea that led to printing.

From there we climbed first through vineyards, then through wooded hills, until we came to the vast and impressive Eberbach Abbey where the movie The Name of the Rose was so memorably filmed. It’s a Cistercian monastery that was established in 1136 - the monks have long gone but the famous wines are still there, along with a couple of excellent restaurants.

For some reason I cycled alone in the late afternoon sunlight, back through the vineyard lined hills from the abbey to Rudesheim – and it was a delightful 12-mile journey that I shall remember for a long time.

Other great days out included a boat ride downstream to Sankt Goar, which is the central town in the Rhine Gorge area. High above the streets stand the ruins of the massive Burg Rheinfels castle, which is one of the best known in the region and well worth the entry fee for visit. In fact, I’d pay the fee for the views from the ramparts alone...

Then it was a long riverside cycle ride back past the famous Lorelei – a vast chunk of rock on the north side of the river. Because of this cliff, the river is squeezed into an even narrower confine than usual and the currents belting around the bend which the rock causes are fierce to say the least.

Many a ship has gone down under the Lorelei and there are legends about the female spirits, or river mermaids, that haunt the place.

Further along on our return journey we were able to stop and admire the Burg Pfalzgrafenstein - a toll castle built on an island in the middle of the river. Just about all those TV adverts I was talking about feature a shot or two of this extraordinary place – the 700 year old pentagonal tower points upstream and acts as a reminder of the days when local warlords would relieve skippers of hefty fees.

They had no choice in the matter – the island fortress worked in concert with Gutenfels Castle and the fortified town of Kaub on the north side of the river. A chain across the river forced ships to halt – any brave trader who tried running the gauntlet was slammed in the dungeon until a ransom was paid.

On the final day of our holiday we walked high above the river from Rudesheim to Kaub, following 12 miles of ancient forest trails in the hills. At midday we stopped for a special lunch put on for us buy a local forester (various sausages, pickles and cheeses, washed down by local beer) – and very now and again we found ourselves at spurs of rock some 500 feet above the river where were treated to classic views of the Rhine. 

Classic views of a classic river. In fact, even that lunch was just as I expected it would be – a classic forester’s meal in archetypal mid-German woodlands. If you like that sort of thing, this holiday will guarantee you get it – and I liked it a lot.