Another Day, Another Vineyard

Beblenheim to Molsheim

Total Distance 60km

See the end of the post for elevation profile, maps, and GPX files

After we stealthily exited the campground without paying we found a few picnic tables about 4 km down the road. We thought this was a great place to stop, have breakfast, and dry out our tent. Every morning the rainfly for our tent has been soaking wet but we’ve managed to dry it either before we left the campground or later when we stopped. It’s been kind of annoying but it’s the best solution to keeping everything dry we’ve been able to come up with this trip. There is nothing worse than that moldy smell permeating throughout your gear.

We made some eggs with the leftover blue cheese and had some coffee while looking at our maps planning our route for the day. We met back up with the bike path through the vineyards and followed the signs through the cute little towns along the foothills of the valley. We figured that since it was a bike route it would be relatively flat, but we did encounter a few hills. These were the first substantial climbs of the trip and we were pretty surprised how much we felt the trailer dragging behind us.

Each city we passed had the quintessential old world attributes. We entered the cities through old ramparts; there were old churches with large bell towers and wine tasting in just about every town. The bike routes were marked with stickers and arrows on street posts which were usually really well placed. When in doubt we just went straight. For the most part only the turns are marked, but it turns into a fun treasure hunt as you wind through the towns looking for your next clue.

When we got through Itterswiller the bike route took a sharp left up another hill. At that point we had had our fill of cute Alsace towns and we decided to deviate from the marked path and take the mostly flat road with more traffic. At another little town, Gertwiller we picked up the trail again and wound our way through more amazing vineyards and into Obernai. From Obernai the path we were following ended and we made our own way to Molsheim. We got to the municipal campground around 4pm and showered and relaxed for a bit.

The campground here was really cheap—only 11 euro for both of us. We did a little bit of laundry and some planning for our next day. We sat down with a bottle of wine and made dinner around sunset and started to feel moderately accomplished at the distance we have covered so far given how long it’s been since we have been on a bike.

The GPX tracks of our route is here.

The map and elevation profile of our ride is here.

View Beblenheim to Molsheim in a larger map