Three beds, nine nights, and what it takes to reserve a Moselle walking week for two
Nine nights on one bend of the German Moselle, three beds, roughly 64 km on foot and a great deal of loose slate. The honest number first: you could arrange most of this yourself. To reserve a Moselle walking week for two costs from $2,450 per person, and the page below sets out what that buys and what it does not.
- Starting figure, per person
$2,450
- Nights
- 9
- beds you will learn
- 3
- Country
- Germany
- How much of this you could arrange without us
- you could arrange most of it yourself
Confirmed as a final figure once the supplier holds the dates. Getting to the country is not included.
- Whatever is agreed comes back to you in writing from the supplier, before any money moves.
- No card is asked for on this site and none is stored: the supplier takes payment on its own terms.
- A request sent through the form is answered in writing within one working day.
The tedious quarter is all that is left for us
That is the number this week carries, and it is printed against us. Most of it you could put together on your own. The valley path is waymarked and free to walk. All three guesthouses take direct reservations by email and answer within a day or two, in English. The timetable for the valley railway is public, the small car ferries cost about two euros on foot, and the 1:25,000 map sheet you want sits in village shops for around nine euros.
What is left is small, tedious, and the reason some people hand it over. Two luggage moves between beds, one of them landing on a Sunday, when the local taxi firms run one car between several villages and want a week of notice. One grower who has never answered an email and does answer his telephone at eight in the morning. A standby for the September evening when a guesthouse shuts for a family week and tells nobody. If that part is the part you enjoy, reserve it direct. We would rather say so at the top of the page than take a reservation we did not earn.
Nine nights, three beds, and the ground between them
Bed one, three nights, in a village on the slope above the Bernkastel bend. There is no railway station there; the nearest is about 18 km away, which is the thing most people get wrong when they plan this alone. Days from it: a slope circuit of 11 km with 320 m of climb, and a flat riverside stage of 14 km that you can abandon at any village and finish by bus.
Bed two, three nights, inside the loop at Puenderich. From the doorstep it is 4 km and 260 m up to the ridge above the neck of the loop, where the river leaves and returns within sight of itself. The station at Bullay is 5 km down the valley, so this is the simple bed to reach and the simple one to leave.
Bed three, three nights, at the foot of the Calmont near Bremm. Two hard half days, and one long flat one along the water to a village of half timbered houses about 11 km off.
The two moves are 26 km and 15 km, forty minutes and twenty five minutes by road. Six walking days between 9 and 17 km, two days with nothing on them, and about 1,900 m of ascent across the week if you take every slope offered.
The Calmont, and whether you should
The slope above Bremm reaches gradients of about 65 degrees, which is close to the limit at which anything can be planted on slate at all. A marked climbing route crosses it for roughly 3 km, using steel rungs, two ladders and a fixed cable on the exposed traverses. It rises from about 90 m at the river to 380 m at the top and takes most people two and a half to three hours with stops, longer when the slate is wet, because wet slate behaves like tile.
It is not a scramble you can talk yourself out of halfway. There are few honest exits once you are on the traverse, the drop below the line is continuous, and it is a poor place for anyone unhappy with exposure, for a dog, or for a knee that is already complaining. It is shut after frost, and it is a bad place to be in one of the thunderstorms the valley produces on hot July afternoons with very little warning.
A vineyard track lower down reaches the same summit with no ladders and no exposure, costing about forty minutes. Plenty of people take it and the week still works. We mention this because the slope tends to be the reason people pick this week and then the thing they quietly dread for eight days.
Weather, harvest and what is shut
The valley runs warm for Germany because the slopes face south and the slate holds the heat into the evening. July averages a daytime high near 25 C, January near 4 C, and rain comes to roughly 700 mm a year spread fairly evenly, so there is no dry season to aim at. In October the river makes fog overnight that sits in the valley until about eleven; the ridge tops stand clear of it while the water stays blind.
Harvest runs from late September into late October. Tractors take the vineyard tracks, pickers work the terraces, and some paths are roped off for days at a time with no notice and no alternative posted. If you want the slopes empty and the paths open, come in the last week of May or the first half of September.
Hours matter more here than distance. Village shops close between 12:30 and 14:30 and all day Sunday, apart from a baker until about eleven. Wine rooms commonly shut Monday and Tuesday. The passenger boats run roughly May to October and not at all outside that. The small car ferries stop in the early evening, which is how people end up walking an extra 6 km round by the bridge.
Who it suits, what $2,450 covers, and how the office is paid
This suits two adults who walk 15 km without making an occasion of it, who would rather unpack three times than nine, and who are content to eat where the village eats. It does not suit anyone who wants one base and no bags moved, anyone who needs a car waiting each afternoon, or anyone walking on a knee that will not take 300 m of descent on loose stone. There is no lift service on the slopes.
From $2,450 per person: nine nights in three family run guesthouses with breakfast, two luggage moves by car, a paper pack with the day routes marked and the telephone numbers worth having, and two tastings with growers who do not open the door to callers. Not covered: your own flights, yours to reserve and yours to name; dinners beyond those two; bus, ferry and boat fares, about 30 euros a head across the week.
You pay the houses and the driver yourself. Nothing passes through this office, and we hold no card details because we have nowhere to keep them. The suppliers pay us a commission afterwards out of their own margin, at a rate agreed with them and not added to your quote. Etre Super Travel reserves trips from Kansas City, Missouri and answers to nobody above it. No aircraft, no beds, no boats and no tours of its own.
Short answers to the usual doubts
Can this office reserve our flights?
No. There is no agreement between this office and any airline, ferry or river operator, and no counter here from which a seat could be sold. Buy your own and hold them in your own name; you will do it faster than we would. The passenger boats on the river work the same way, sold at the landing stage on the morning and not running at all outside roughly May to October. Tell us the day you land and the nine nights are built to fit it.
Do we have to climb the Calmont?
No. A vineyard track reaches the same summit from the western side with no ladders, no cable and no exposed traverse, and costs about forty minutes. The view from the top is the same view. If you are undecided, leave the day free and look at the slope from the far bank the evening before; it reads honestly from there, which is more than can be said for photographs of it. Nothing else in the nine nights depends on the climb.
Could we do this from one base instead of three?
You could, and we will arrange it that way if you ask, but it becomes a different week. From a single house you spend around 90 minutes a day on buses and the valley railway getting to and from the walking, and the evening services thin out badly after six. The three beds exist to remove that, not to give you three houses to admire. If the objection is carrying bags rather than moving, note that the bags go ahead by car and you never lift them past the doorstep.
What if it rains for most of the nine nights?
Then some of it stops being walking. Wet slate on a 40 degree terrace is genuinely slippery, the climbing route should be left alone, and two of the ridge days turn into riverside days. The railway and the buses will still move you along the water, and the wine rooms are indoors and open in the afternoon. We hold none of your money, so we cannot refund any of it. The houses set their own terms, and we send those to you in writing before you commit to anything.