Today didn’t turn out quite as planned.

The plan was to cross over the Rhine river into Germany and follow the Rhine up towards Rotterdam.

The Rhine river separates France from Germany and the cycle route goes up both sides of it.

The first part of the plan worked well. We crossed the Rhine, took some photos and were excited to finally be in Germany. Then we met some cycle tourers backtracking.

They said, ‘The Rhine path is closed on the German side. We’ve just done a 25 km detour for nothing so we’re heading back to the French side.’

So we were in Germany for all of 5 minutes before we decided to backtrack too. But first we ate our pain au chocolat.

It was hot today and we were both a bit bothered by our plans being scuppered and having to backtrack about 10kms in total. It wasn’t far, but in the heat of the day it wasn’t much fun.

My knee is starting to hurt again, my body is screaming for a rest day. But the weather is so nice, we just want to keep cycling.

We rode over 70kms today and arrived at our camp very hot and bothered. After getting our tent up and having a shower we are feeling much better.

We had a goats cheese, walnut and pasta salad for dinner as we are low on camping gas. Not many places in France sell the screw in gas bottles, only bayonet type ones. We’ve been trying to get to a Decathlon for days but they’re always too far off the route.

So tomorrow we have made a decision to spend two nights in a town near here and try and figure out where we go from there.