I’ve just been cycling through the borderlands of Germany, Luxembourg and France with a group of Germans. We were on a boat/bike tour, based on a Dutch barge travelling along the Moselle, and it all went pretty well. Good company, plenty of interest, and weather was temperate, with not too much headwind. But there was one rather surreal moment.

By way of background, I need to explain that these borderlands are territories which belonged first to one nation, then to another; Trier, for example, was once French – and Metz was German. It was in this region that the French created the Maginot Line of fortifications after the First World War, to keep the Germans permanently at bay (fat help that was, the Germans just went round through Belgium).

Anyway one morning, just by the old fortifications of the Maginot Line, we were passing through a wooded watery wilderness in the river valley, which was something of a fisherman’s paradise. A place of backwaters and pools lined with ramshackle huts and temporary fishing camps, with men murmuring gently to each other over shared packs of Gauloises.

The Germans I was with had a habit of warning each other of hazards they encountered on the cycle path, usually with the word ‘Achtung’. I’d gone ahead to take pictures and had stopped by one of the backwaters, close to a group of fishermen. All of us looked up as one as a series of guttural ‘Achtungs’ approached through the trees, getting louder and louder as they came. For a moment there was a look of real apprehension on the face of the French, who suddenly looked as if they wished they had something more martial than just a fishing rod in their hands.

But then they visibly relaxed as the phalanx of cyclists appeared out of the gloom. The average age of the party was around 65, and their helmets were brightly coloured, not camouflaged. One of the fishermen grinned, and waved. ‘Achtung Bertie’ he called out as the cyclists swept past.

*UPDATE: following regional elections at the beginning of April, the newly-empowered Green Party has called a halt to the building of the bridge described in the blog below, so the Moselle is reprieved for a couple of years at least. But the access roads are completed, so locals believe the bridge will come. It’s just a question of when.

The Moselle in pictures is a prettier, cosier version of the Rhine. Not so many barges, and fewer castles, but dreamier, more flower-strewn and with more village life. Wonky half-timbered houses teeter along the riverbanks like old ladies who still insist on wearing their stilettos, rouged up with geranium windowboxes. Meanwhile their washing lines run up and down the adjacent hills supporting ancient vineyards, frilly with blossom early in the year, and then curtained in green as the summer progresses.

It’s a traditional landscape, and it has featured in poetry, prose and painting, but now it is at the centre of a row about progress not unlike the one that’s already simmering in the UK over the new London to Birmingham rail link. For there’s a new motorway bridge being built across the river valley at Ürzig, a small village just upriver from the tourist honeypot of Bernkastel-Kues, only about 20km west of Frankfurt’s Hahn airport.

The idea of this Hochmoselbrücke is to connect Frankfurt and Frankfurt Hahn with Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The bridge itself will be 480ft high and a mile long, and plans show it to be of no particular architectural distinction, unlike the motorway-bearing Millau Viaduct in France, which was designed by British architect Norman Foster and has become something of a tourist attraction in itself.

In fact on this occasion the British have been wheeled out to criticise the bridge’s construction, most noticeably in the shape of venerable wine writer Hugh Johnson, who criticised the ‘highway on stilts’ as a ‘great shadow of uselessness’ which will ‘banalise’ what is essentially a 17^th century landscape.

There’s a strong protest movement resisting the bridge, particularly as they fear it might affect the quality of the celebrated local Riesling, but it looks as if they’re fighting a losing battle as the construction cranes begin to loom over the river valley, peeping over the fringe into the landscapes they are about to uproot.

For the British visitor, and for Ryanair, the new bridge will mean that Frankfurt Hahn will become more of a hub for onward journeys westwards, and not largely eastwards towards Frankfurt, as at present.

But such convenience has its price. If you want to see the Moselle valley in its unsullied configuration, I’d recommend that you go there soon.