Sailing & cycling along the vineyards of the Moselle | Boat Bike Tours | Mosel-Radweg

I am sailing and cycling along the vineyards of the river Moselle, on a trip of Boat Bike Tours. Starting in Metz (France), ending in Cochem (Germany). Mostly following the Mosel-Radweg.

Cycling and sailing, they provide the same kind of relaxation. The clock starts to tick slower, my head   gets clear, thoughts disappear. I’m one with nature. And  what’s a better way than to share a bike boat trip   with like-minded people. Spending a week  traveling along the river Moselle through France,  

Luxembourg and Germany. See the landscape passing  by at a slow pace, taste the wine and dance a little bit. Hi everyone, I’m the Fietsvlogger, which is  Dutch for bicycle vlogger. And the next week   I will be on the ship and on this bike. I’m  joining a trip of Boat Bike Tours and I’ll  

Be traveling from MetZ in France to Cochem  in Germany, mainly following the Moselle river. Good morning, just up. We’re on our way  from Metz to Thionville today. We actually will   cycle through three countries. So we start  in France, then we go to Luxembourg and to  

Germany. It’s a beautiful day, especially for  October. It’s going to be a nice warm sunny day. There is a yoga session on board. It’s so quiet here up the deck. We’re a big enough group, but there’s no one up here.

So today we are cycling with the Canadians. You are yes, we’re so proud of that. – By boat. Still in France we see some bunkers from the Second World War, made by the Germans. The came over the mountains. They didn’t expect that,  the French and the Belgians. So then the Second  

World War was started. 5 years, 10 years after the war, there were still mines in the field. A lot of people injured again when working on the land. I gives me goosebumps. I just had a French coffee, espresso,  might be the last French coffee, because we’re heading to  Luxembourg now.

The DJ here in the group.   I’m Brandon, from Canada. And  you’re the dj, yeah. And which song is this? This is Old Dominion, an American  country band. Very good to listen to on a ride.

We are in Schengen. Pretty cool to be here. This is the  place where in 1985 a few countries including The Netherlands,   where I’m from, decided to open the borders and  make free travel possible. So we didn’t need any  

Passports anymore. I have to look this  up, because I learned this all in history but   I kind of forgot. It were the countries Germany,  France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands   who decided to open the borders in 1985 and  later loads of other countries in Europe  also joined the treaty.

I’m having my lunch on the border between France and Luxembourg.   No customs, no drama. I’ve been there with the bike you  know, that it’s so hard to cross. But here nothing like that. Deutschland. Da kommen wir. Germany. We are in Germany.

It’s jacuzzi time. There’s a time  for cycling and there’s a time to chill. We arrived in Saarburg, which is a small  city from the Middle Ages. It’s, as you can see,   very picturesque. There are all these narrow  streets going up. On the top there’s a  

Big huge castle. The water force here was  used for the mills. All kinds of different   production here: linen, oil, leather. So it  was a very active rich little city.   Going up now, to the castle. And we’re walking  because it’s a bit steep to cycle up here.

Germany has all these really cute old little cities, with  pastel colored houses. Really nice.   Vineyards. There we are going. Castles are always up high and I definitely have more cycling legs than walking legs. My legs. Wine. It’s only a thousand stairs right? We can do it.

Even I have to duck. Are we there yet? Yes, good. We made it. That’s the Moezel (Moselle). Somewhere there, is the ship. There. So all around this little city, you  can see vineyards on the hills. The Moselle, this whole area, is known for the vineyards. Today we’ve been cycling past a  

Lot of wine yards and it’s the Romans who  actually brought that over here. They were   all settling along the river which was a good  defense line. And they loved wine, so they   started producing wine over here. Yesterday  we cycled past a site where there used to be  

A Roman villa. And we could see the mosaic that used to be there. The slate in the ground makes it really good to produce wine. That’s because the slate keeps the warmth and, well,  the plants need a lot of warmth and that’s  why this is a really good place to grow it.  

And of course also because there are hills. You get a lot of sun as well. Now back to the ship. That night we have a barbecue and  before we know it we all start dancing. All cycling along the water  today. First we cycled along the  

Saar and then we took this little  side river. Then back to the Moezel (Moselle). We arrived in Trier, the ship is behind  me. Going for a little walk into the city.   Do they still make the Eiswein? It has a very high sugar content, very  

Expensive in Germany. There are the last grapes. It’s got a noble rod on it. Trier is a very old city, actually one  of the oldest cities of Germany, next to   Worms. First the Celts came here and then  the Romans. For a while Trier was one of  

The capitals of the Roman Empire. So very  important. It’s kind of crazy to be in the   big city again. Today we’ve been cycling  along the river and it’s been so quiet.   And now there are lots of people. But it’s cool.  And as you can see it’s sunny, so that’s good.

This is the Dome, it’s very old and big. The organ is really cool.   It’s an amazing organ, it’s pretty impressive. Look at this. Such a view. I’m sitting in  the jacuzzi and I’m looking at Trier. Wow. I like this. Oh… Bedtime soon, see you tomorrow. Nighty.

Ready to go? Bye bye! Ready to go! The light you know, this autumn light. And then suddenly there’s a big gathering. I just saw these people here, all getting the grapes.   So I thought: I just stop and ask if I can make  some pictures. And they said: oh yeah, why not. 

But they were actually just finished, so I made  a few pictures and now they’re having lunch   together, really cool. So I’m going to ask  now what the story is, what they’re doing. They’re just harvesting the  Grapes. Today I think it’s the

Bottom half and maybe next week is the top half.  Then they drive it back to the hometown and   they will start the process to transfer from  the Grapes to wine. okay I think a lot of grapes   were already gone? Yes there are some  bad ones, but some already turned into  

Raisins. So they are more sweeter. They look different. Yes, because they have the sugar in it. And now they’re having lunch after the hard work? Yes.  Is this all family? We are family, the one with the head. And  the rest are friends and people from a  

Long time ago. And they all come together on  this day, you call them. And they do it all   for free. Oh they do? Yeah yeah, just for the fun of it. And for a bottle of wine or two at the end. Nice. Fair enough. Thank you, enjoy the lunch.

After cycling on my own for  a while I meet the group again and   they invite me for a drink. I’m having a wine here, with all these… Canadians. Canadians. Damn Canadians What’s your favorite? My personal  favorite is number 13, my boss’s favorite is  

Number 8. And what makes 8 good and what makes 13 good? I prefer 13   because it’s from really really old  plants, over 100 years old, and they are   deeper, they have different flavors in it.   And number 8, it’s a really typical dry Riesling… Okay I think we have  

To try your recommendation. Yeah I think  it sounds good. Good number, 13. Number 13, Proost. I just had three wines with the  Canadians. But it it was very   nice. And you can see people picking  up walnuts everywhere really really picturesque. Cyclist passing on the left. – It’s me again.

Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. We just arrived in Bernkastel. Another  beautiful old city. There is a story here   about a sick bishop, that was treated by wine and got better. It’s been a long day but really nice.

There I go again. It’s getting a bit boring, I  know. So I’m in a jacuzzi and look around me! Magic hour. Wooo. Good morning, I’m staying on board for a day. I  decided to take it easy and enjoy the beautiful  

Surrounding from the ship. Because you can always choose to either cycle or stay on the   boat. It’s a bit chilly this morning, foggy. But really pretty. It looks a bit spooky. We’re just sailing for 10 minutes  and the sun is already coming out.  

It’s so great. When the sun comes out and you see all   these different kinds of green in  the vineyards. You see the light   green, the dark green. The colors are just  changing all the time. It’s pretty amazing.

Just sailing into a lock. So we’re going  into the lock now, and then the water level   will change and then we can go further. See the water level is higher on our side and it’s lower there. We are sinking. Three meters or something. I’m going to ask the captain after this,  

How many meters it is. But it’s going  so fast. I’ve been in a lot of locks but this is   a fast one. See all the walls here? We were the whole way up there and went the whole way down.

We just got in the second lock and this is  even deeper. See how deep we are! So these   locks are needed because the Moselle  originally is a natural river. And natural   rivers have waterfalls, and they have a lot of  different water levels. That’s why they made  

The locks. So they’re basically controlling the  river. Here you can see the water falling down.   Let’s say hi to the captain. Hello hello. So we had two locks there. How many meters (did we go down)?  

It depends. Sometimes we go down 12 m and  the last one was 7 m. You saw the number 1939?   That was impressing, how high the water was in  that time. It was flooding 2 m over the lock, but  

Now it’s beautiful. There’s low water now.  Is it hard to go through a lock? No not at   this moment, because there is not much  water. When it is flooding, it can be   difficult. Especially if you go down. Then the water can suck you to the dam. Now it’s a piece of cake.

Piece of cake? I don’t need to do anything. It goes by itself. It’s like a Tesla? It’s like a   Tesla, indeed. And how long have you been doing  this? I’m sailing all my life. This is the first  

Time here on the Moselle. And it’s nice  here. The most beautiful thing is every corner is different. One of the guests just gave  me champagne. Soon we’re going into   the town here, Zell. It’s another wine  town. And then we’re going to have a wine tasting. It has a black cat on it.

My name is Peter, I’m the old one.   My son follows me in my business, but he has  to play football today. And my wife Lisa.   In 1948 our town parliament made a decision and  they said that each wine which grows in our  

Town is allowed to be called Schwarze Katz. And it’s  a nice story, how this wine came to its name, 170   years ago. In that time the wine wasn’t sold in  bottles, from the wine growing areas, but in whole   barrels. In our case the wine merchants came from Aachen, the big town on the Belgium-Netherland

Border. They tasted many many barrels and after that they were so drunk that nobody could remember which one was the best one. While they were discussing, the wine farmers wife came in the cellar to bring some bread. The black house cat immediately jumped on one of  

These barrels. It seemed the cat was defending the  barrel. And so the drunken fellows said: that one must be the best.  And now you are allowed to do what your mother has forbidden you, when eating soup.  You can slurp. The aroma is getting free, your  whole tongue is coming in contact with wine.  

And the wine becomes warmer. This slurping  sounds like that. Oh! That’s quite exasperating. We had 5 wines to taste, I think. Bit tipsy now. No no no I’m not. But it was   fun. It was good. You always learn so much during wine tastings. I had quite a  

Few wine tastings in my life and you always  learn something new. He did a good job. He had a lot of good stories. Cool. He was saying that he was actually starting to   become involved in banking. Then he was there  with 200 people and he had an exam and he was  

Like: I don’t want to be with these people.  So he failed the exam and now he’s a wine maker. The Canadians made it, thumbs up. How many miles did you? Oh many many. We did them all. One way or the other. It was very difficult.

So I just said goodbye to everyone.  Everyone just left the ship. We shared   contacts. So if I go to Canada then  there are some places I can stay. It was a great week. It was really  nice, also to meet everyone. Beautiful  

Landscapes and beautiful cities, loved it.  So thank you for watching this video. It   would be great if you would like the video  and subscribe. And see you next time. Happy cycling. Climbing up another hill. Another castle. The last one. Wow it was worth it. Look the view.