Of Vines & Motorhomes, Moselle Valley, Mehring, Germany

Every now and again a huge floating hotel smoothly powers its way past us along the Moselle, carrying cruise passengers along the mighty river to or from the Rhine. A steep wall of forest provides a backdrop, echoing with birdsong. Behind us stands the pretty town of Mehring, and further on rise the vines, as they have around here since the time of Christ. It ain’t a bad spot to be in, and we’re in a pitch right up against the river on the Mosel Weinstraße. The cost of paradise? €12 a night to you, guvnor, if you don’t need hook-up (zellerhof-mosel.de/wohnmobilstellplatz).

I’m a little envious of the tiny figures sat eating lunch in the cruise barge’s restaurant. Not so much of the food, or even the magnificent view they must have, more of the itinerary laid out for them. The boats move in the morning and evening, with sight-seeing opportunities on land during the day. Once they’d typed in their credit card numbers to book the cruise, the passengers have to make no additional effort to decide where to visit, it’s all laid out before them. Some are on cycling tours, where they ride along the river bank each day and catch the boat up in the evening. Again, the travel’s pre-determined.

Us, on the other hand, have the great luxury of choosing where we stay each and every evening. It’s both a blessing and a curse. I expect no sympathy! It’s a very nice problem to have of course, but it takes some ongoing effort trying to work out where to go each time we upsticks.

While sat in Trier, we had to decide whether to head back to Luxembourg. Or maybe go north into Wallonia in southern Belgium? Turn east further into Germany? What’s in each of these places? We largely don’t know, as we’ve (a) not brought any guidebooks with us, muppets and (b) we’ve done zero planning, again, muppets. In the end we arrived here thanks to the fact the park4night app had a thick cluster of stellplatze (motorhome aires) along the Moselle, which meant there must surely be something here? We looked at the reviews and photos of a few of them and were sold.

We picked this particular spot as it’s well-placed right on the river, with easy access to hiking routes into the forest and up through the steep, vine-blanketed slopes. The town has a small supermarket, handy as we arrived on a Sunday and all the supermarkets close here on Sundays, so we couldn’t stock up on the way. The stellplatz also looked very well kept, with wide separated pitches, stabilised but with grass for keeping our tootsies comfy.

The owners collect payment in the evening here so we rolled into one of the free places facing the river, and on went the Bialetti (stove top coffee maker). The sun shone and all was good with the world. But for our water pump requiring a wee whack to get it to serve its masters to its full capacity, the world’s stayed that way.

We’ve had a couple of lovely days here, half the time sat back watching the world, the other half ambling about in it. There are magnificent views from high on both sides of the Moselle, and we’ve been up there to stand and gawp in wonder. The 365km multi-stage Moselsteig Trail passes through here, so you’ve plenty of walking to go at.

This is Riesling country, and as we walked along the road contouring the hillside information boards told us about the vines. A combination of factors make the south-facing slopes perfect for grape growing. Clay soil laced with slate holds the water while providing nutrients. The broad river below helps manage the temperature in the valley, and provides mists which do some magic we didn’t quite understand.

The steepness of the slopes seems to serve a purpose too, if only to impress the hell out of us as we watched little narrow-gauge tractors working their way between the vines. Yellow triangular boards mark the edge of each area of vines, and if we’ve understood the translation, are used by helicopters while spraying insecticides. Clearly life revolves around these plants in these parts, they even appear on gravestones.

One place there are no gravestones is, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the town’s Jewish graveyard. In the 1930s half the small population of Jews emigrated. The other half were deported and murdered in the holocaust. Some who had moved abroad were still deported and didn’t survive the war. Terribly sad stuff in such a beautiful place.

Life, for the rest of us, goes on. As well as the walking we’ve enjoyed a furtle around in the supermarket, eyeballing the German stuff and picking up some nice bits of cake and 0.0% Bitburger beer brewed up the road. We’ve also walked over to the rodenbahn on the opposite side of the river, a kind of summer toboggan. For €5 they strap you in to a one-man rollercoaster. It pulls you up the side of a huge hill and you come down as fast as you dare, braking when being flung into the forest seems an imminent certainty. It’s a buzz!

We’ve grabbed drinks in the sun and mucked on the health circuit on the Huxlay Plateau, where most of the scenic shots in this post were taken from. The locals have built an area for drinking and BBQing up there which looks a right laugh, a great place for a party. Hand-carved wooden signs are scattered around the place encouraging you to imbibe the vino and enjoy the world.

We’ll move on tomorrow. The weather’s stayed great, if a little pressure-cooker hot in here at times. Rain appears to commeth though, so we might find ourselves either trying to avoid it (difficult) or finding somewhere cheap or close to indoor stuff to sit it out.

Cheers, Jay