{"id":213366,"date":"2025-10-14T18:56:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T18:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/213366\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T18:56:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T18:56:13","slug":"europes-first-certified-long-distance-cycle-path","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/213366\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe’s first certified long-distance cycle path"},"content":{"rendered":"

Encounters on the road were often intense, and uplifting. Riding past Mannheim towards Karlsruhe, a long-distance racer let me draft for two hours on his wheel, shouting wisecracks into his slipstream. On another occasion, I was welcomed into a nunnery during a thunderstorm. One of the sisters, Angeline, confided that the community was dying out. “You must know someone who wants to join us,” she said.<\/p>\n

Pressure of time sadly meant I could not make a detour to the Alsace Wine Route, but I carved out a few hours to enjoy cafe society in Basel, where I began the last leg of the route in Switzerland. People of all ages slipped into their swimming costumes and floated downstream<\/a>, clutching their belongings in bright fish-shaped “Wickelfisch” waterproof bags.<\/p>\n

\"AlamyAlamyLai da Tuma in the Swiss Alps is the source of the Rhine and the end point of the EV15 cycle route (Credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n

The stretch running 150km (93 miles) eastwards towards Lake Constance deserves to be better known. The Rhine is straddled by a series of fairytale-like wooden bridges, with the longest at Bad Sackingen. There was not enough time to do justice to the fabulous medieval town of Stein-am-Rhein, with its half-timbered houses jutting out into the street and a square surrounded by facades depicting mythological themes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I neared the finish line, there was another twist in store for me.\u00a0For the previous 1,000km I had immersed myself in German-language culture, which I felt would unlock the secrets of the Rhine.\u00a0Now high in the Swiss Alps, the route took me to one of the last redoubts of the Romansh language<\/a>, descended from Vulgar Latin spoken by Roman soldiers who invaded in 15 BCE. Pausing to buy a snack, I racked my brain for my schoolboy Latin, but remained stuck on: “Veni, vidi, vici”.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Encounters on the road were often intense, and uplifting. Riding past Mannheim towards Karlsruhe, a long-distance racer let…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-213366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}