The Rhine - Bacharach - Part 1 - Rosie and The Operator

This is my second posting for the day….after having finished our journey along The Rhine – I would like to introduce to our beautiful home base for the last 4 days.

Bacharach – Rosie has fallen in love with this wee town from the minute The Operator drove through the tiny one way 14th century gate in the defensive wall that surrounds the town.

Directly in front of us is our Hotel for the the next four nights, the Bacharacher Hof. As mentioned before, we arrived on Wednesday and it was the owners day off, considering there were still 6 more groups of people to check in, Ellen, the owner admitted it wasnt much of a day off. Five generations of the same family have owned this Hotel, Ellen and her husband Dirk are the latest in the family and are in their mid forties and have been there for 25 years. They work hard over the busy summer period and then close over winter from November till March for renovations and holidays.

Our room was out the back of the Hotel and it had a balcony seating area overlooking the grey rooftops of the village and up the grapevine covered hillside to the imposing Burgh Staleck and, lean out abit….you could see the ethereal ruins of the Werner Chapel.

This back yard of Rosie and The Operators was bliss, we drank a few bottles of wine on this deck in the evening sun listening to the chirp of the swallows swoop overhead and the fighting for nesting rights in the chimney pots of the raucous starlings. In the back ground the church bells would chime loudly every quarter and every hour and every 15 mins or so you would hear a freight or passenger train whizz past.

These are images of the main street The Oberstrasse, and what greets your eye.

The Alte Haus is the one with building paper on it…It is one of the most famous houses on the Rhine and many a song has been written about it and it has been a setting for a few films.

The Church of St Peter below, stands above all in the town. it was started in the 1100s and not finished till the 13th century.

Rosie and The Operator also spent a fair bit of time in the shady courtyard of the Post Hof after a days sight seeing sampling the wine there. The ruins of Chapel Werner are on the hillside above.

It was formally a Knights Templar stronghold which was founded in the 11th Century and the handrail on the curling staircase is made out of one piece of newel.

Bacharach has been a town since 1356 and owes most of its fame to its vineyards and wine trade. Vines were planted here in the times of the Romans.

You can see how steep the terraces are, Rosie and The Operator sat on their balcony wondering how the workers worked the vines due to the steepness. Answer above – The worker sat on a sled type rotary hoe that weeded the row, he was also able to work off the back for pruning…it is winched by a cable from the tractor at the top of the slope, ingenious. In the Middle Ages Bacharach was the main trading centre for the wines of the middle Rhine. Every year Pope Pious the Second used to order a cartload of Bacharach wine to be sent to Rome.

Every corner and every turn in this town is beautiful and on show, yet has a real feeling. Amongst the hotels, cafes and crowds of wandering tourists are post offices, hairdressers, real estate agents, bakeries, butchers and everyday shops. Real houses line the streets with real people who get up everyday and go to school or catch a train to work somewhere.