Riding the Siegtalradweg, kind of

At my British friend Nick’s suggestion, today we planned to ride a section of the 140 km (or 128 km, depending on the source) bicycle path running alongside the Sieg River, to the east of Bonn in the Bergisches Land. Nick and I had ridden a section of this near Eitorf and I thought it would be a nice relaxing ride and a way to introduce my colleague, Henri, who is new to road cycling and has just purchased a very nice Storck Vision Lite bicycle, to the joys of riding in Germany. All of the websites I looked at suggested that the bike route was pretty flat as it followed the river valley and this would be a nice introduction. I figured out a route starting in Betzdorf that would allow us to get a tailwind as we headed west towards Bonn and I was hoping to ride 80-100 kms, finishing in mid-afternoon.

As Robert Burns noted, the best laid plans ‘o mice an’ men gang aft a-gley and our plans to went somewhat awry. Nick decided he would ride from his home in Seelscheid-Neunkirchen to meet us at the Betzdorf train station, which we arrived at after a transfer from Cologne which all went very smoothly. Nick’s ride was not so smooth since he began at 7 am and discovered every hill (including some 14% grades) between his home and Betzdorf, arriving with nearly 70 km in his legs and nearly 1,000 m of climbing!

After a late start, we realized that we could not find the Sieg bike path and heading in a likely direction along a river discovered we were following the Heller, thus keeping the Lost Boy tradition of immediately going in the wrong direction alive in Europe. Turning around and going back through Betzdorf, we headed westwards through some very busy streets as everyone in Betzdorf was going shopping but the traffic almost immediately evaporated and we found ourselves on an excellent road, the Landstrasse 62, that brought us quickly along the floodplain of the Sieg and even through some forests.

We had been told that the path itself had not been constructed everywhere and really only began near Hamm/Sieg. The road we were on was well-marked and we could make good time, so we were not complaining. It was framed by hills that had been excavated over the ages for coal. The road took us through Wissen, where Germany’s saddest railway station exists, being located under a series of concrete overpasses and consisting of a single ticket vending machine next to the tracks. We eventually found a place to get onto the paved path along the river but it kept coming back up (usually up a steep incline) and then at one point we took a turn along what was supposed to be our bike route but turned into something quite different

Once again we followed a river along a road that began in poor condition but improved. It clearly had almost no traffic ever and we were surprised to pass a nice-looking Gasthaus. Where did the customers come from? But then the fun was over as we realized we were heading in the wrong direction entirely. We decided to try and get to Hamm/Sieg and get back on course but this required climbing the most difficult hill of the day for us from the hamlet of Bruchertseifen up to Roth, some 120 m vertical in only 2 kms of climbing. My Basso was meant for flatter roads than this so I did not go up in a hurry, although I was eventually able to catch up to Henri for the mountain points.

After passing through Hamm/Sieg rather quickly, we crossed the Sieg at Au (!) and found the path again and were able to follow it for quite a while for a change. In Windeck we realized that we were getting thirsty in the hot sun so we decided to look for a place to get a cold drink and possibly some food. There was a ruined castle to see as well so we went uphill a bit to take a look.

Drinks were served at a place next to a 1789 watermill that had been restored and looked very nice. We had some alcohol-free beer which was quite refreshing and which will not tire you out in the heat of the day and exertion of riding.

While Henri and Nick relaxed a bit, I turned the Basso uphill and made my way as far as I could to the castle ruins, having to walk the last section of road which was steep dirt. The view was quite spectacular over the Sieg Valley and the castle ruins themselves were impressive. It must have been quite impressive to look at, the foundations of the towers indicating it was a major fortification. The sign on the wall that gave the detailed history of the castle suggested its heyday was from the 13th to the 17th Centuries, when it was pretty much destroyed by cannon during the 30 Years’ War. Typically, it then became a quarry for the locals needing building materials. A fancy villa was built next to it in the 1850s but this was completely destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II and there are not even any foundations left.

Leaving Windeck, we continued all the way to Eitorf, first along the bike path and then along the main road without getting lost. We caught up with a group of four cyclists who were managing a really pathetic paceline but moving pretty well nonetheless. We sat in and, when two of the riders jumped, we went with them. It was fun but then they all went their separate ways as we came to Eitorf. We had made some good progress so it was time to celebrate! Returning to our favourite café in Eitorf, we had some sandwiches and liquid replenishment before walking around the corner for a well-deserved (particularly in Nick’s case) ice cream.

Leaving Eitdorf, our navigation of the Sieg did not go so well as we headed towards Hennef, first going into a dead-end and then winding up on a mountain bike trail that saw some walking, although Nick managed this quite well with his mountain bike experience and Henri looked good with his 23 mm tires too. The Basso is actually set up to ride this kind of “road” but my lack of experience on the trail made me nervous. And strangely enough during our ride on the mountain bike trail we had some very light (and rather welcome in the heat) rain.

Eventually we found our way to Hennef and the railway station where we met Nick’s girl friend, Nadja, who had taken mercy on him so that he did not have to add to his 160 kms and 1900 m of climbing for the day and could get a ride home without climbing four more ridges. After we enjoyed some more cold alcohol-free Weissbier at the surprisingly nice station café, we parted company. Henri and I took the S-Bahn to Köln Deutz-Messe, where we transferred to an absolutely packed Regio train for the mercifully-short 30 minute ride back to the main station in Düsseldorf.

Although Henri and I only rode about 90 kms and just over 750 m vertical compared to Nick’s epic ride, it had been a hard and somewhat frustrating day as the failure of the bike route to live up to its promise had dented our pleasure somewhat. But parts of it were really excellent, and it was still better than the gruesome Erftradweg!

A Bergisches Land Loop: April 25, 2011

The Sieg River, with the Siegtalradweg on the left

Following our successful excursion to Liège over the Easter Weekend, my friend Nick invited me to ride in his neck of the woods, the Bergisches Land. My first excursion there in October had not gone so well as I fell off my bicycle but I was pretty confident after two days of riding the Ardennes, so I took my little rental car down the A3 towards Cologne in preparation for an excellent day of cycling. I found my way to Nick’s house in Neunkirchen-Seelscheid without any problem and unloaded the Specialized Tarmac. The weather, as it had been for the whole weekend, was superb.

We were to be joined by a third rider but he could not be there as his daughter had been stung by a bee and was off to the hospital so it was just the two of us who pulled out. For a moment the ride went well but on our first tiny hill I suddenly discovered that I could not shift gears with my rear derailleur very well. From all the taking off and putting on of wheels over the last few days the mechanism had gotten out of calibration but a few turns on the adjusting barrel and it was all fine again.

Riding through the quiet green countryside, our ride began with a gentle descent until we reached 14 kms, when the first hill of the day made us work as we made our way up to Göpringhausen, passing an old paper mill on the way. We continued past horse farms and wide field until we reached the picturesque little village of Ruppichteroth, where we stopped briefly to look at the old church and the excellent half-timbered houses. There was a fine flower-bedecked fountain to admire, and after admiring it we left the village (taking us on a route not expected by Nick) we climbed up out of the valley and heading south. Soon we had a noble descent that brought us to Herchen, where we rode for a while on the Sieg bicycle path, a smooth asphalt track that runs alongside the river for around 140 kms.

A break for a fine cup of coffee in Eitorf and then it was time for our big hill challenge of the day as we crossed the Sieg and began an impressive ascent from Bourauel to Hohn, gaining 150 m in only 2 kms. When we got to the top and admired the view, I mentioned to Nick the benefits of interval training on a nice steady hill like this, so of course we turned around and rode it all over again at racing speed. I think my Ardennes rides really helped as I felt quite good on the climb and enjoyed a little sprint on reaching the flat stretch at the top.

After we had recovered a bit from this exertion, we rode into an area that was new to Nick, so we got a bit lost but soon he found the correct way after a dead end in Stockum. There was a lot of climbing left in the course as I found out in Winterscheid as my legs were beginning to make their displeasure known. “Shut up, legs!”, to quote Jens Voigt, and so they did and so we went on, including a rather brutally steep little climb to bring us back to Neunkirchen-Seelscheid. It had been an excellent ride on quiet roads, and a bit of a challenge, covering 85.59 and 1300 m vertical. And of course we enjoyed a great big ice cream each at the end!

Riding in the Bergisches Land

Coat of Arms of the Dukes of Berg

Once my shipment of personal effects arrived from Canada, I was very anxious to assemble the bicycles and get out for a ride in one of several scenic areas that I had marked on my maps. The most promising of these looked like a tour in the Bergisches Land which I found on the Internet. I worked out a GPS route and put it onto the Garmin, hoping that perhaps this time my homemade route planning might actually work!

The weather in Düsseldorf had been pretty wretched since my arrival, with perhaps five days with rain in every seven. After two weeks, I ended up with the Mother of All Head Colds and suffered a great deal. I was feeling better at the beginning of October and tried to arrange a ride with a Brit living near Cologne, but then it was his turn to get sick! Feeling still so-so, I went on Saturday evening to the Düsselstrand , a swimming pool/sauna near my apartment, for their Midnight Sauna event, in the hope that I could clear out my breathing passages. It seemed to help, and I was able to sleep well enough.

The next morning I rode the Tarmac to the Wehrhahn S-bahn station, a short distance from home. The train took me in the direction of Cologne, past the massive Bayer chemical works in Leverkusen. One transfer and I was on the next S-bahn to Bergisch Gladbach. Incidentally, I have noticed “No Smoking” signs at S-bahn stations in Berlin and Düsseldorf, completely unenforced as there are always smokers standing around and puffing away. So much for the German reputation for following rules...

Bergisch Gladbach is kind of an ugly place, with heavy traffic everywhere. I started the GPS and, to my amazement, it actually showed the correct direction to get out of town! Hooray! Getting out of town was not so much fun. It was a holiday (October 3: German Reunification Day) but since it was a Sunday anyway things were closed, but everyone was out in their cars. I rode through the city on the rather narrow bikepath, working my way around obstructions like parked cars, and as the road began to gently climb I came to the sorry realization that seven weeks off the bike had done terrible things to my form as I was starting to feel the first little uphill stretch. But then again I had not had much of a chance to warm up either.
Following the signs to the Odenthal, I was soon in the Bergisches Land Park, which covers much of this region. There was a very wide paved bikepath next to the main road, which was much pleasanter than what I had experienced in Gladbach. The GPS was pointing me the right way and soon, off to the left, I saw the imposing bulk of the cathedral in Altenberg. Ignoring the GPS’ suggestion, I rode parallel to the cathedral and then turned onto a small road that took me directly to it.

There were many people standing around the cathedral, and there were a pair of fancy restaurants there as well. That pretty much looked like all of Altenberg to me. The cathedral is not really a cathedral since the town was never a bishopric. The Dukes of Berg had had their family seat here and in the 13th Century they moved to Schloss Burg on the Wupper, giving the property to some Cistercians who built an abbey. The cathedral, begun in 1259, is owned by the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen, and is used for both Protestant and Catholic services, as well as for concerts.

A comment on names is in order here. The Bergisches Land refers not to mountains (Berge) of this quite hill region but to the Dukes of Berg, who reigned in one form or another from 1101 to 1666. The second linguistic oddity is that their new castle, which still exists near Solingen, was Schloss Burg, which translates to “Castle Castle,” or, more accurately, “Palace Fortress,” which is a contradiction in terms.


Leaving Altenberg, I discovered the Berge indeed as I had a very steep climb up a hill to get to Scheuren. I was proud of having used satellite images to plot my course on very obscure backroads but of course you don’t get a feel for the gradient when you are looking straight down at the photos! There were quite a few hikers enjoying the sunny weather but this wheezing cyclist eventually made it up to the top, enjoying the sight of the neat farms and little patches of forest in the rolling countryside.



I stopped at what would turn out to be the only Konditorei en route that would be open on this Sunday and enjoyed a wonderful piece of Heidelbeerenkuchen with a cappucino. I stocked up with some buns for later in the ride and took off my arm warmers as the day warmed up rapidly.

The weather was really terrific now and I was enjoying myself. There was no traffic at all and the road was in excellent condition. I felt much better after the cake and pushed the speed up past 30 km/h at a steady pace. I passed one of the few cyclists I was to see that day at a good pace but then again he was on a mountain bike.

As I was enjoying the great weather and the fine scenery, having put in 22 kms of my 80 km ride, I carelessly let my front tire slip off the asphalt. There was a lip on the side of the road and not much of a shoulder. I turned the wheel back towards the road and suddenly realized that I had not turned it sharply enough, meaning the rim was about to hit the edge of the asphalt at a flat angle. This meant in turn that when the wheel slammed into the pavement, the whole bike would flop over sideways and then fly over to the left. As if in slow motion I watched the whole crash take place, thinking as I went down that this was going to hurt but I had to protect my teeth.

When I stood up there was a lot of pain. I had ripped my right glove and there were abrasions in the knuckles; my nice Pezcycling jersey was torn in the middle of my chest; my left elbow and my left knee were bleeding and there was a cut in my upper lip and the right side of my chin. Even though I had felt an impact on my mouth, my teeth seemed intact.

I mopped up the blood as best as I could and the mountain biker arrived and offered to help, although I could see he was pretty distressed by the way I looked. He offered to call someone for me but since there is nobody to call I thanked him and said that I would probably be able to get back on my own. He thought that the clipless pedals were partly to blame and was very sympathetic. I thanked him and he rode on.

I felt pretty terrible and was not sure if my nose was bleeding as well or this was just from the cut in my lip. I used up some of my water to clean up as best as I could and then looked at the bike since I was in the middle of nowhere and really needed to have it functional if I wanted to get back to Düsseldorf somehow. Fortunately, there was no damage whatever to the bike. The seat was twisted far off to one side, as was the front wheel, but all I had to do was loosen the bolts, reposition everything and tighten it all up again. The water had revived me and the pain was not so bad (although I must have looked scarey), so I decided to just keep on going. After all, my GPS route was plotted perfectly so far and I wanted to see if it would get me back as promised!

The road was extremely rural and most of the time I rode in empty countryside, passing only the outskirts of a few villages. The course was a big Figure 8, with Biesfeld at the centre, and I found myself recognizing the place names I had entered on the course. One section was a dirt path but although it was a bit muddy it worked out fine. It was quite hot now and I was being careful with consuming liquids as I had used up quite a bit of water cleaning up the blood. I was also not feeling in the best of condition and when I reached Thier, the furthest point on the ride, I suffered from some bad cramps in my legs. There was a bench on the edge of a little forest, so I sat down and ate some energy bars and drank a bit.

After a bit I felt better and enjoyed the nice stretch that took me from Thier back towards Biesfeld, riding along the Sülz river and passing a nice golf course. The route was quite lovely but there was a lot of climbing and occasionally the cramps returned under the exertion. At one point the GPS took me off the main route and up a brutal little climb, so hard I had to walk for a few moment to compose myself. Fluids were now getting to a critical level and I was not even able to find a water trough or fountain in a village. Luckily, as things were getting particularly painful I found an open gas station.

I had some change and gave it to the cashier for three bottles of ice tea. She then said I had to pay extra for the deposit but then she laughed and said that cyclists always drank everything on the spot, so if I promised to stay on the premises I would not have to pay. I filled one of my water bottles and then drank down the two remaining bottles on the spot. I think even by the standards of German cyclists I had consumed those ice teas at a record rate!

There was the odd bit of downhill left and I soon rolled into Bergisch Gladbach again. The GPS brought me to the train station without a single misdirection and soon I was heading back to Düsseldorf. There was a marathon run in Cologne and quite a few people got on the train, so it was pretty much standing room only to Leverkusen. I noticed people looking at me strangely and realized it was from the wounds, although they were not bleeding much at that point. I did chat with another cyclist who got on the train, and we talked a bit about helmets. I never ride without one and am always surprised to see people on racing bikes in Germany that don’t wear them.

Getting out at Wehrhahn, I was on the platform putting on my helmet when a lady came up and offered my some Kleenexes. At first I thought my nose must have been running badly but then I realized it was because of the abrasions on my knee and elbow! I thanked her but said I would be home soon and would look after the mess there.

Once I was home, I cleaned up the wounds. When I had last had road rash, in 2000 in Mallorca, they cleaned out the abrasions with what felt like a wire brush to get out all the little stones. I thought this was the usual method and I gently rubbed the wounds to get out any foreign material before having a shower, which was not all that warm since I could not bear any heat. It turns out that scraping out wounds is no longer the approved method of dealing with road rash, as I looked things up on the Internet afterwards. I was pretty sore and probably dehydrated and was not sure how I was going to shave with the cut on my lip.

On Monday I went to the pharmacy as the Internet recommendation was to get some disinfectant cream on the wounds and bandage everything up. The star at the pharmacy were horrified by the way I looked and thought I should get a tetanus shot. That probably would have been the right thing to do but I did not think the abrasions were really all that bad, looking worse than they were. As I write this four weeks later everything is pretty much cleared up, with the only evidence of the accident being the cut on the knuckled on my right index finger, and the small crack in my right front tooth. I was very upset about the jersey, which was really nice and had only been worn a few times, but Pezcyclingnews is sending me a new one. And my old Swatch chronograph watch was so badly scratched up from the impact that I have treated myself to a new 60 Euro Haas & Cie pseudo-Swiss chronograph.

I am still angry with myself for making a stupid beginner’s mistake but also relieved that the damage was not worse. The Bergische Land is ideal for cycling but perhaps the 82 kms I rode was a bit too ambitious for an out-of-training rider on a hot day. I will go back, and may even do this route again, but will work out the water/energy drink situation better. On the other hand, the GPS functioned flawless and although I had one in my little backpack, I never opened a map for the whole day.

Distance ridden: 81.74 kms in 4:21 Average speed: 18.8 km/h; maximum speed 56.5 km/h Elevation gain: 1324 m