On Monday the weather was rainy and windy. So we stayed put in our lovely mooring on the Saar River with just cliffs for company. No TV either as the satellite was cut off by the cliffs. Still the next morning dawned much brighter and we walked along the river to the town of Mettlach where we visited the Villeroy and Boch factory shop. Their worldwide headquarters are based there though much of their manufacturing takes place all over the country. Then down the river we sailed passed more magnificent cliffs.
We stopped for lunch at the pretty town of Saarburg. A small stream flows through the town and then over a waterfall and into the Saar River.
Restaurants cluster along the stream and tourists crowd the restaurants and everyone seems happy though we just bought some bread and ham and ate lunch on our boat with the Saar for company and the sun on our backs.
Then on downstream with the cliffs slowly diminishing until at last we turned a corner and there we were on the River Mosel (Moselle in French). Wide and slow flowing and suddenly lots of barges in all directions. We stopped about 1km downstream at the town on Konz from which we visited the city of Trier by train. For all its size and importance as the old Roman capital of Germany, it has no facilities for small boats. Still the train station of Konz is only a 5 minute walk from the boat and within 10 minutes of boarding the train we were in the middle of Trier where our first stop was the 2000 year old Porta Nigra (or Black Gate) that still dominates the town after all these years.
Almost in as good a condition as the day it was born. A mighty entrance to the town it would have seemed in those far off days. We walked over to the Basilica which was once Emperor Constantine’s throne room. A vast building made of brick (you can see it in the photograph below to the left at the back of the much later palace of the bishops).
There are lots of other Roman ruins all around Trier but we left it there and caught the train back to the boat and next day headed further North and downstream. I had always wondered why the Mosel had so many vineyards along its banks when a narrow valley would block a lot of the sun. But the Mosel twists and turns in huge loops as it wends it way down to the Rhine. On all the South and West facing loops the banks are covered in vineyards.
By now the weather was once again quite changeable i.e. sunshine and showers and has remained that way until now and the next few days. But the Mosel is just sheer magic with its high sides covered in vineyards. The small wine villages splattered along the sides with chocolate box villages of half timbered houses that are basically unchanged for 500 years. We called in at the most famous of them Bernkastel. There were three hotel boats moored up there and the village was heaving with tourists. Very pretty but destroyed by tourism. Every house on the ground floor was either a restaurant or a tourist shop.
Then on it was to another famous town of Traben-Trabach where we stayed the night. The town is half way down the Mosel to the Rhine from Trier (100 km to Trier and 100km to Koblenz at the confluence of the Mosel and the Rhine).
This week we continue down the Mosel and join the Rhine before putting the foot down and covering 400km in a few days to arrive in Holland by the weekend.
