The Rhine

The Rhine is a major transport artery, 766 miles long, and its waters sustain lots of boats and wildlife. Grand cities, including Düsseldorf, Cologne, Bonn and even Strasbourg, on the eastern tip of France, hang close to the river. There are also beautiful little riverside settlements along the way, which typify what people mean when they talk about the beauty of rural Germany.

This sense of the rural is accentuated by the numerous vineyards peppered along the Rhine valley. On most cruises, you can stop along the way and visit a vineyard or two, tasting their wines and trying the local food — which is about as authentic a German experience as you can get.

The best bit of the Rhine is undoubtedly the UNESCO-registered section between Koblenz and Rüdesheim, where the steep valley walls are topped with forest and dotted with crag-topping castles and half-timbered towns, each of which has its own river landing.

The Main

The Main isn’t as big as the Rhine, but at 327 miles it is still huge when compared to many other European rivers. Where the Rhine flows from south to north, the Main flows from east to west, through the heart of Germany. And it intersects with the Rhine near Frankfurt, just upstream of the latter’s UNESCO-registered section mentioned above.

Idyllic castles and countryside provide the gorgeous backdrop to a Main river cruise. Most routes pass through Frankfurt, allowing you the opportunity to spend some time in this vibrant city, but also to see it from afar. Its beautiful skyline has earned it the nickname ‘Mainhattan’, as it has some of the most impressively tall and elegant buildings in Europe.

There are also vineyards along the Main, so a comprehensive German wine tour of the Rhine and the Main might be on the cards for the die-hard wine enthusiasts.

For much of its length the river Rhine is a big and nondescript waterway, responsible for draining much of Switzerland, Austria and Germany and carrying one helluva lot of freight en route. But for a comparatively short piece of its 1,233km journey from source to sea, it achieves true celebrity status as it cuts through the 260 metre deep Rhine gorge, creating some of the finest scenery in western Europe, to which mankind has added handsome towns, quirky watchtowers and towering castles. These features, together with the slings and arrows of history that went into creating them, has led to the whole gorge being listed as a site of world heritage by UNESCO. And that’s without even mentioning the wine; the gorge’s south-facing shores are slathered in some of the most productive vineyards in Europe.

The gorge has been inspirational for poets, painters and composers (Brahms, Wagner, Goethe) for several centuries – and buttock-clenching for ship’s captains for even longer. The artistically-inclined appreciate the contrast between the beautifully manicured layers of vines and the indomitable wildness of the water, which surges white-flecked through the gorge with a force that all but defeats the most resolute of marine diesels; a skipper needs special certification to tackle these waters.

The most spectacular stretch starts at Rudesheim (Bingen) in the south (frequent trains run from Frankfurt airport via Wiesbaden and take 75 minutes) and runs almost due north for around 65kms to Koblenz. For all of this distance – in fact all the way from Wiesbaden to Koblenz – a distance of 108kms, there are no bridges. Accordingly river transport is key, both in terms of cross-river ferries, and in long distance cruisers, some of them hotel boats savouring the scenery with leisurely stops and others of them day cruisers providing a regular scheduled service.

Three different approaches

For visitors there are three main choices of activity. For walkers, the Rheinsteig is one of Europe’s greatest long distance footpaths, and it follows the river on the east bank (the vineyard side) mostly in the state of Hesse. It sometimes dips down into towns, but much of the time it stays high, staying in shaded woodland of oak and birch, offering terrific views of the river below.

For cyclists, the west bank has the dedicated cycle path, down at river level, sometimes along the side of the road, sometimes doing its own thing at the water’s edge. It is impossible to get lost, and the river’s regular boats – or the trains, which serve both sides – are always at hand to return you to base if you don’t want to retrace your steps.

And then there are all the boat passengers, on day trips or on sleek, glittering hotel boats, sunning themselves in the gorge’s microclimate between stops at the key towns. These are Rudesheim, Bingen, Bacharach, Oberwesel, St Goar, Bad Salzig and Boppard, and they are usually linear in layout, with a castle above, with tower-encrusted walls, and collections of gabled and half timbered medieval houses, boasting plenty of places to sample the Riesling or the coffee and cake.

Elsewhere, the Rhine gorge remains pretty thinly populated, despite sitting at the heart of Europe’s most populous nation. Only wine-makers’ mansions break the patterns of vineyards, their tractors combing the slopes, and holding back rampant forest.

All in all it is a lovely place to pass a handful of days.

There’s no over-arching official website that covers the whole thing, but the Romantic Rhine is the best general site, and the Rheingau covers the wine-rich destinations at the southern and eastern end.

It was always taken for granted in our family that being able to speak other languages was not just a ‘good thing’, but essential. And so, in the summer of 1966, just after leaving school at the age of 18, I found myself on the Loreley Express from Hoek van Holland to Bonn, where I was met by my father’s cousin Helmut and his mother, my great aunt Annie (who, in spite of being over 50 percent Jewish had lived through the entire Nazi period in Hamburg with no more problems than most).

Living with Dad’s cousin came with many new experiences. One was living in a flat, rather than a three storey house. Another was living over a Gasthof, which must have imprinted itself deeply on my subconscious at the time. Even more memorable was working in a small factory making mechanical adding machines, among half a dozen workers with not a word of English among them. But most impressive of all was that huge river at the end of the street, just a few yards walk from the flat.

While I had grown up on the banks of the Thames, rowed across it at high tide and waded to the island in the middle at low tide, the Rhine was utterly different. It was hugely impressive, with hundreds of real ships, some racing downstream, others slogging upstream against the current. These ships had cars parked on the aft cabin roof! Scattered among the cargo ships were the wonderful white steamers of the Köln-Düsseldorfer Rheindampfschifffahrt. Those two words may have been hard to pronounce, but they certainly stuck in my mind, conjuring up all sorts of romantic images.

Finally, one Sunday afternoon I felt I could afford to spend some of my earnings on a steamer trip, from Königswinter on the opposite bank to Andernach and back. Though I later discovered that castles are not as frequent on this stretch as they are south of Koblenz, there were more than enough to awake a fascination with this great river that remains with me today. On the return journey, after much thought, I splashed out another couple of Deutschmarks on a little guide book All about the Rhine, which I still have, and which still, in spite of (or perhaps because of!) the poor English, evokes the magic of the great river.

Some 46 years on, at least in part in homage to that teenage discovery of one of Europe’s truly great rivers, I offer ***walking holidays (among many others) along the Rhine Castles Way between Koblenz and Bingen.

***Since writing this article, Russell has announced his retirement. His itineraries are now being offered by Macs Adventures.