Lahn Cycle Route - Feudingen to Marburg

We started our day extra early, as we took the train to get to our starting point in Feudingen. In general the Lahn Cycle Route is easily accessible by train, but due to constuction, a few sections were currently serviced by "rail replacement" buses – and therefore transportation of bikes not possible at the moment. So we had to take a bit of a detour, the train ride taking us about 4.5 hours in total. But it all worked out fine, the trains were punctual and so we reached our destination by around lunchtime.

Once we arrived in Feudingen, the Lahn Cycle Route wasn't hard to find. A sign right near the train station showed us the way. From here on into the direction of Bas Laasphe the route led us first along some forest roads and a lot more gravel than we had anticipated! After reaching Bad Laapshe and crossing through its picturesque old town, we mostly rode on paved roads and bicycle paths through open fields and small towns towards Biedenkopf.

As the route leads down river, its mostly slightly downhill, which makes for a really nice, easy ride. During this section the bike route is mostly not too close to the still very small river Lahn, but instead just follows the general direction. Every now and then, the river is crossed on a bridge, allowing for nice photos. But even more than that  the river (or at least it felt that way), we crossed the railroad though.

The next town we came across was Biedenkopf, with a nice castle sitting on top of the hill. Which was one of many actually, there's one on about every second hilltop we came by. As we rode on we passed through many small towns like Buchenau, Caldern, Lahntal. Most of them were really cute with old town centers and beautiful half timbered houses. The landscape itself was nice, but not spectacular during this section.

Only a few kilometers before our destination Marburg, between Sarnau and Cölbe, we suddenly encounted a closure of the cycle path and signs for a detour. We took the route, and while all day the cycling had been really easy, this detour suddenly led us up a steep slope into the "Lahn Mountains". After getting up early and having already biked close to 50km without a real lunch, this was really exhausting. Looking back, we really would have liked some information on where the detour would lead us, because we could just as well have taken the main road in the valley. And we probably would have done so, if we had known.

But of course, a steep ascent also comes with a nice descent. So once we had reached to top, we could just basically roll down the mountain on the other side. From here on it was just a few more kilometers before we reached Marburg.