Stuart’s GoldWing Blog

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For our second Riding Day in the Mosel I offered the group a choice.   I would lead a ride aimed at enjoying some of the Area’s excellent riding roads, which would be a rider’s day out rather than a tourist day, not all hard and fast riding, but an opportunity to ride at pace on good roads for its own sake rather than a leisurely scenic tour.

The alternative would be to spend time as a motorcycling tourist in some nice tourist places, such as Bern Kastel, an attractive town an hour or so up river which is both easy to find and has easy bike parking when you get there.

All the couples chose the tourist option (can’t think why!) leaving just Bill and I to set off in search of some nice twisty roads. John, plenty experienced enough to cope with leading a group of bikes to Bern Kastel, volunteered to do so.

On the following day I also provided an option of a riding day out of a more touristy nature, like the first one we had had, but having sampled Bern Kastel and having not seen much of Cochem apart from riding through it, most of the group opted to be tourists for the last day in the Mosel. We were of course facing the longish ride back to Rotterdam for the Ferry home the day after, so it made sense for some to have a rest day.

Bill and I, lacking wifely supervision on this holiday, were therefore off the leash for two whole days in a wonderful biking area, so we set about making the most of it.

On my satnav I had a stored a route based on the one which Klaus, our Hotelier, had led me with another group last year. It had taken us along some roads and to some places which mere visitors to the Mosel would never find, so with just two of us riding together, this was a chance to see if I could find them again. The satnav route wasn’t completely true to Klaus’s original because the process of converting a track (the satnav record of a journey) into a route is not straightforward – or at least it’s not straightforward for me.

So while I managed to find the special viewpoints Klaus took us to, we didn’t necessarily get to them in quite the same way. Not that it matters in the Mosel area which way you go on a motorcycle, there are so many attractive roads you can almost take any turning in any direction and end up with an enjoyable ride.

But Klaus knew some special places and hidden viewpoints. For example he took us to a football pitch on the outskirts of a little town called Valwig and got us to park on a rough track alongside it. We were then led about 200 yards along a footpath into the woodland – wondering as we walked what on earth this was all about. I don’t suppose I was the only biker to have wondered why we had stopped somewhere where there was no sign of anywhere to buy even a cup of coffee, let alone a bacon butty.

However our patience, or in my case lack of it, as I stumbled in my biking boots along a rough woodland path, was rewarded, as was Bill’s when I took him back there this year, with an amazing view. Suddenly a gap appears in the trees on the right of the path and you are standing on the edge of a very steep hillside looking down to the river below and the town of Ernst on the other side of the river. So steep is the hillside that the view is almost vertically down on to this little town. Bill was duly impressed.

The gap through which we took in this view has a small, sloping wooden platform under foot from which, if you were at all careless, it would be possible to take a distinctly precipitous step into oblivion. The penny dropped after a while that this structure served a purpose other than committing suicide and its primary purpose was probably a launching ramp for hang gliders or the like. Standing on this ramp to take a picture of the view took more than a little courage, not least because the average hang glider pilot is probably quite a few stones lighter than the average GoldWing rider and this structure looked to be distinctly under-engineered. Bill and I took the precaution of standing on this platform one at once and I allowed him to go first.

The place where we had parked the bikes to take in this view happens to be fairly close to the supposed location of the ventilation tower of the WW2 underground slave-labour Spark Plug Factory which I had gone looking for a couple of days previously. So Bill and I diverted briefly to see if we could spot anything I had missed in the rain on my first attempt, but we couldn’t. If I get back to coping with tramping through woodland again after my hip is fixed, I’ll go back and have a proper look. I’m sure there will be little to see and anyway the ventilation tower isn’t central to what went on in the tunnels below. But having learned of the existence of this place of such awful oppressiveness, in an area of such natural beauty and grandeur, it somehow seems important to make proper contact with it – a bit like the obligation I always feel to stop for a few moments to show respect at a war cemetery whenever I come across one.

The roads were dry and well surfaced and we took advantage of this as we rode them on these two days, enjoying our bikes’ excellent handling. Motorcyclists at large are unfamiliar with GoldWings and they are usually pretty surprised when they see them performing like this. I rode at this sort of pace with a mixed group in Yorkshire a couple of years ago and at the coffee stop after a section of nice twisties which we had taken at pace one of the other riders said “So you can ride it like a hooligan then?”. I’m pretty sure he meant this as a compliment to the bike’s handling capabilities rather than a criticism of my personal riding style. It is of course possible to “make progress”, as it’s called, without taking irresponsible risks; that’s what advanced motorcycling is all about.

Our footpegs would touch down on the bends from time to time as we made this kind of progress and I was reminded yet again that I am no accurate judge of when this is likely to happen. It depends on undulations in the road surface and how hard the suspension is being compressed in the turn as well as the angle of lean and the road’s camber. That’s why you sometimes don’t scrape when you expect to and vice versa. Footpegs pivot upwards of course, so that they scrape along the surface as they touch rather than dig in, and there’s quite a bit of lean angle to go on a GoldWing before anything else on the bike touches down. Once you get the confidence not to panic and start pulling the bike upright just because the footpeg is scraping, it’s merely a useful indicator of how much lean angle you’ve got left.

Although the point at which the footpegs will touch down may be unpredictable on some bends, you can judge this point much more easily on, for example, roundabouts, where the road surface and camber is more even. So roundabouts, in dry and diesel-free conditions, are a good place to get used to the experience of touching down without undue anxiety. Just let the footpeg lift under your foot, as you hear and feel it start to scrape, then enjoy the moment; you are discovering what your bike is capable of, in case you ever need it. If you think you are too fast in a bend and in danger of running out of road you should nearly always lean further and turn tighter rather than brake, it’s safer. Of course it’s even safer to get your speed right as you enter a bend. But if you have go that wrong, leaning over further and thereby turning more tightly should replace panic braking as your instinctive response.

The Mosel Valley’s scenery is of course spectacular and we were able to enjoy that too. Riding hard on the twisties focuses the mind more or less completely, which is one of its attractions, but there are always more open sections of road when you can spare a moment to look around and admire the vista.

Bill and I also visited another of the obscure place which Klaus had taken me to the year before and this time there was refreshment to be had as well as a nice view. Grevenbruch Castle, which overlooks the riverside village of Trarbach, is one of many ruined castles along the Mosel and in this case it’s very ruined indeed, with little more than a few bits of wall left standing, albeit one of them is quite tall. It occupies a commanding position, as of course medieval castles, built for primarily military reasons, all tend to do. There are spectacular views both up and down river and it has the advantage over others, such as Klotten Castle, of being relatively easily accessible by road, or rather a road of sorts, and having a car park and a cafe/restaurant on site.

Access is via an awkward turn off the main road on to a narrow roadway which then turns into a rough and twisting track which, in case you’re not already wondering whether this place is worth the effort of getting there, suddenly presents an extremely steep and tight S-shaped bend on the final approach to its car park, which is all gravel. Not really the sort of place to take a GoldWing you might think, and you’re right. It would not have been a place to take the whole group. But I had been as pleasantly surprised by how easily I managed to climb out of this place the previous year as I’d been terrified about the prospect when I rode into it.

And obsessed though he is with cleaning his bike and combing his hair, Bill is a very capable rider, so I had no hesitation about taking him there. Apart from anything else he would come in handy helping me to pick my bike up if I dropped it this time!

In the event we enjoyed a pleasant refreshment stop in the shade of the trees on a lovely sunny day and we even took time to explore the Castle ruins and take some pictures. Despite several opportunities I didn’t quite manage to catch a photograph of Bill combing his hair, so the pictures are not truly representative.

There are lots of attractive refreshment stops along the Mosel, indeed you can stop in any village or town and find something. Bill and I stopped at the site of a former monastery, where there is still an interesting church, on yet another elevated viewpoint at Beilstein. Looking very small from the riverside road, this place expands behind the river frontage. A set of steps, enough to get both of us puffing and pausing again, lead up the hill to the terrace in front of the Church where there is a cafe/restaurant.

Zell was another pleasant refreshment stop. This is much bigger, a small town rather than a village, and it has some tourist shops as well as a selection of restaurants on the street one block away from the river. There is also a riverfront snack bar, which we used, which has a few tables under an awning. By exercising Biker’s Privilege, you can even park on the pavement next to the seating while you relax and eat or drink.

Because it’s open-air eating you do of course run the risk of smokers sitting next to you while you’re eating. I haven’t smoked for over thirty years but I can still remember the days when most of us did and a smokey environment was unremarkable; the change in UK to a legal ban on smoking indoors in pubs and restaurants has made a huge difference to my expectations and I now find it really unpleasant to have anyone smoking in my vicinity, even on an open terrace. Germany is pretty good in this respect; its France where you are still likely to encounter someone at the next table in a restaurant lighting up between courses.

On the second day, as we headed vaguely back towards Klotten during the afternoon, I decided to surprise Bill with another really spectacular view I seen the year before and we diverted towards Burg Eltz. This is a Cinderella-type castle set in an isolated steep valley a few miles north of Klotten. And it is hidden from view until the last minute as you approach it; for maximum impact I didn’t tell Bill where we were heading.

The last part of the approach to the Castle, beyond the Car Park, is on foot, although there is an option to take a minibus ride down the very steep roadway. The Car Park is along either side of the last half mile or so of roadway leading to the place where the minibus service runs from. Knowing this I led Bill to the far end of the Car Park in the hope of finding a parking space there. We were unlucky but rather than subject my dodgy hip to an extra half mile of walking unnecessarily, I exercised Biker’s Privilege and parked against the railings of the turning area right at the end, strictly speaking illegally but not really causing any obstruction.

The reason for mentioning this otherwise uninteresting detail is that by parking tightly against the railing, when I dropped the bike onto its side stand, there was no room to get off it in my usual way. Because of my hip and because I have a rider’s backrest on the bike, I use an inelegant but effective reversing bunny hop on the left leg, dragging my right leg over the seat as I move backwards. This sounds silly but having tried various other ways, it works for me. But it wouldn’t work here, there was a railing in the way. So I tried to get off to the right hand side. After a few false starts I eventually managed to achieve this by performing part of what we used to call a forward roll during my school gymnastics days, narrowly avoiding actually making contact with the ground by scrabbling forwards on all fours for a few feet.

It was not a pretty sight but there was a certain amount of spectator value for Bill, who fortunately for me was the only spectator. He hadn’t seen me attempting gymnastics before and wondered what on earth I was up to. By this time I was laughing aloud at my foolishness and the predicament I had created for myself and it didn’t occur to me at the time that if getting off had been difficult, getting back on would be even more of a problem – but more of that later.

So we walked the few yards to where the minibus was waiting and I decided, since I knew the walk down to the Castle was challenging even without a dodgy hip, to treat my companion and myself to a minibus ride. The minibus was standing waiting but without thinking, as a Brit used to access for the left hand side, I walked around the front of the bus to what turned out to be the wrong side; the passenger door was on the right. So back around the front of the bus I went. The bus was empty apart from the driver, who hadn’t given any indication of noticing my wanderings around his vehicle, so having eventually located the passenger door, naturally I opened it and made to get in.

This caused the driver to suddenly spring into life. He uttered a stream of harsh-sounding German, which I didn’t understand at all but took to mean I should get into the very back seat rather than the row immediately opposite the door, to avoid blocking the rear seats. So I reached for the release lever to get into the back. The driver then said in English, again very aggressively, “Read the paper on the glass!”, pointing as he did so to the window behind the door.

The penny then dropped that he meant I should read the notice stuck to the inside of the window which said “The door and windows are controlled by the driver”. The penny dropped again after a pause for translation of this puzzling phrase into understandable English, that this unpleasant individual expected his prospective passengers to wait outside the vehicle until he was ready to leave his seat and open the door and supervise boarding. Well, I thought to myself, we won the war (or at least with John Wayne’s help we won it) so I’m not being treated like that. We’ll bloody well walk rather than pay to use his precious bus – so I closed his minibus door with gusto and limped off in silent high dudgeon.

Bill had witnessed this altercation and without exchanging a word, it somehow seemed natural to both of us that we should spread ourselves out across the narrow roadway as we made our descent of the hill towards the Castle. We must have taken quite a while to hear the noise of the minibus approaching us from behind as it came down the hill and this might have caused the driver some frustrating delay as he had to alter speed and aim for the gap between us or around us, which might just have appeared to him to be a shifting target, as this limping, lumbering tourist, who was apparently also deaf to the noise of his approaching vehicle, staggered about in startled confusion.

A bit petty of us perhaps, but we felt he deserved it. And I’m afraid a similar thing happened as we walked back up the hill too, before we moved out of his way.  We got him slowing right down and having to change gear if not come to a complete halt on the really steep section of the hill. He showed his irritation by missing me by a fraction of an inch as he drove past and I suppose if I’d thought quickly enough I could have cried out feigning impact for the benefit of his passengers, but maybe that would have been going a bit too far.

The Germans we met throughout our visit to the Mosel were, with the notable exception of this nasty piece of work, very friendly and helpful people. This made the minibus driver’s obnoxious behaviour even more surprising and conspicuous.  He was after all in the tourist business and so is the Castle.

We walked only half way down the hill to the viewing point overlooking the Castle, took our pictures and walked back up. We had paid the friendly man at the Car Park entrance his due, and he had been suitably complementary about our bikes.  But we didn’t bother visiting the Castle, and of course we didn’t spend any money on the minibus either, as originally intended.  The Castle is an amazing spectacle from the overlooking viewpoint and well worth going to see just for that, maybe worth going all the way down too.

There is another chapter to this bus driver story.  As we reached the top of the hill again, both of us puffing a bit, I sat on a bench near the bus stop to cool off and take on water. A while later the bus arrived, the driver got out and opened the door and out got his passengers, not one of them smiling or thanking him. Was that significant? A UPS van had turned up a few moments earlier and its driver was waiting to get a signature for a couple of parcels destined for the Castle. I didn’t need to understand the German conversation between the two drivers for it to be clear that the minibus driver wanted to pick an argument and was objecting vociferously to having to accept the parcels for onward transportation to the Castle. It wasn’t his job or he didn’t get paid for it, that sort of thing.

The UPS driver didn’t take the bait. He simply smiled and said something quietly which might have been “please yourself, I’ll take it back if you like” but his smile spoke volumes. Having finished his rant, which took a little while, the minibus driver sign the receipt and put the parcels into the back of his minibus anyway, and then slammed the door even harder than I had done.  He then strutted off around the front of the minibus back to his seat.

I’m afraid I burst out laughing long and loud at this point, amazed and appalled at the minibus driver’s behaviour, which on this occasion I had of course had no involvement at all in provoking.  It was almost childish behaviour on his part.  He said nothing more as he strutted angrily back to sit in his driving seat; maybe he was plotting to wreak revenge by making the next lot of passengers wait even longer for him to open his door than usual. The lady sitting next to me on the bench, who clearly was waiting to take the bus and looked puzzled by what was happening right in front of her, was clearly going to have to await a little while longer, perhaps even longer than usual, to be allowed to take a more comfortable seat inside the minibus.

The minibus driver knew of course, couldn’t help but know, from the UPS driver’s smile and especially from my completely uninhibited laughter, that at least two of the three of us present thought he had made a complete prat of himself.

As I walked the few yards back to the bikes Bill was already there, accepting the compliments of the tourists who had recently dismounted from the minibus, and who were now admiring our bikes. One of them, an American lady, was volubly appreciative and we fell into conversation.

She was delighted to learn that the bikes were made in Maryville Ohio and no, we explained, they weren’t Harleys and no, they weren’t quite identical either.

This was my cue to explain, as I take every opportunity to do when I’m out with Bill, that while my bike is genuinely Honda Pearl White, Bill’s is a one-off colour, basically whitish and pearlish but with a gold, or perhaps brownish sheen on the edges, a colour which I feel is best described as Last Week’s Papal Robes.  Bill, well used to this unwarranted verbal abuse of his immaculate pride and joy, smiled tolerantly as usual.

It emerged that Betsy, as the American Lady turned out to be called, had also suffered the burden of the minibus driver’s unsavoury approach to customer service.  And she was so complementary about our bikes too, chivalry required that she be offered a ride on one.   Bill was already mounting up, so I helped Betsy to board his bike, with careful regard to his paintwork, and she was ridden the few yards down the Car Park to her own vehicle grinning happily.  It was a bit like a scene from Driving Miss Daisy, except of course Betsy was far too young for the Miss Daisy part and Bill lacked the baritone gravitas to be a credible Morgan Freeman. They were both smiling far too much.

It was at about this point that I realized that my prospects of assistance getting back on my own bike, still leaning tightly up to the railings, had just ridden off down the Car Park with Betsy.  So as I hobbled over to it to take stock of the challenge, a dreadful foreboding crept up to join me; this was not going to be easy.

Reversing the forward roll manoeuvre which had got me off it was not going to be an option and it was soon apparent that there wasn’t any other way short of hiring a crane to mount the bike from the uphill side.  So I squirmed alongside the railing and managed, eventually, to get over it into the narrow gap alongside the bike. A precarious manoeuvre followed, involving leaning backwards along the railing in order to get my right foot high enough to lift over the saddle but this didn’t work at all; I nearly fell backwards over the railing. There just wasn’t room to swing my right leg up.

Eventually I resorted to mounting the bike conventionally by folding the rider’s backrest down, then standing on the left footpeg, then leaning as far forward and across the bike as space would allow in the hope of getting enough legroom to lift my right foot over the back seat. I had to lean so far forward and across the bike to do this that I nearly got my helmeted head wedged irretrievably between the handlebar and the edge of the windscreen and there was clearly a developing risk that I was transferring so much weight over to the right that both bike and I would end up toppling over. I just managed to get my leg over and sit down; it was quite a relief.

While all this was going on there was, mercifully, no one else around. But I couldn’t dismiss from my mind how ridiculous it would have looked to a spectator – this fat guy with a big flash bike struggling so much to get on it – that I couldn’t stop laughing, which of course didn’t help.  At one stage I was stuck, spread-eagled over the bike, as if trying to mount it in the non-vehicular sense.

No doubt Bill, generous soul that he is, would have helped if he had been around and he wouldn’t have stood back videoing my performance for posterity, as I so richly deserved for mocking the colour of his beloved bike. My resolve to get my hip fixed, and to lose some more weight, was strengthened by this experience.

So I got my bike moving again and joined Bill further down the Car Park where Betsy was still sitting on his bike having photos taken. Her husband and the Dutch couple who were their companions were there too.

It turned out that Betsy was a Travel Writer and when I confessed that I was a would-be writer, having started this Blog a few months ago, she readily agreed to have a look.  I was hoping she would give me a few professional tips but Betsy rejected the idea that she is a professional writer, describing her writing as an avocation, her day job being a lawyer back home in New York State.

So I had not only insulted my friend Bill’s bike, I’d had him giving an uninsured ride to a New York lawyer without a helmet.

Thank goodness that most people, including most minibus drivers and maybe even most lawyers, are nice friendly people with whom you can really enjoy a chance meeting.  National stereotypes are not a useful predictor of whether you will find any individual likeable or not.

As a GoldWing rider touring at home or abroad, rewarding opportunities to give real pleasure to an interested stranger often comes your way because your bike attracts admirers almost everywhere you take it.  Shame on the GoldWing rider who doesn’t spare a moment to do this.  You even get to spread understanding that GoldWings aren’t quite the same as Harleys.

It was a good couple of riding days and Bill and I really enjoyed ourselves. Sadly on the next day, all too soon, it was time to head for home.

The photographs with this Article include some by Bill Squires and Betsy Shequine and I am grateful for their permission to use them.