We had the best nights sleep in the amazing campsite that overlooked the lake. We were up and off early, just before 9am this morning.

There was not any camping on the route today, so we booked a hotel for today, which we figured was about 70kms away. That was a mistake.

The day started out well, nice cycle paths, but a bad headwind and we struggled to get over 17 kms/hr. But it was shaded and cool, and quite nice. We stopped for longer than we should have in the town of Speyers. I was drawn in by an aeroplane museum, which if I knew we didn’t have to cycle 70 kms, we would have stopped and spent the day exploring it. We snapped a few photos from the outside and moved on.

Then we stopped at the first place that did coffee. We’ve decided to take the coffee as it comes in whatever country we are in. In France it was small espresso cups, which we loved. In Germany it’s more of a long black. If you want milk, the only choice is those little sachets of UHT milk. I’m assuming it’s the same all over Germany. I also orderd a pretzel and Mike had a apple filled croissant. He chose the better one.

After our quick stop, we saw a Lidl next door. Dammit, we could have bought cakes for a fraction of the cost. I did a quick shop for supplies: coffee, bananas and a baguette. Then off again.

Despite all the stops we still managed to ride 35km by lunch time. After a short while, we lost the sign posts navigating our route. Thankfully with Mike’s expert nagivation skills, we were back on the route at no time. It was great riding alongside a railway line, we were hurtling along at 25 kms per hour, a nice tail wind pushing us along. It felt so good, I was thinking at this rate how we’d do our 70 kms by 3pm and we can be settled in a nice hotel, catching up on editing and offloading footage, and having an afternoon nap. And then it happened. We looked at our phones, the garmin, and both swore our loud. We were heading in the wrong direction. The fact we had a tail wind really should have been a giveaway. But we were loving it so much!

Anyway, Mike’s expert navigation skills told us we could pick up the path without backtracking, so I blindly followed him. After 30 minutes or so, we stopped and looked again at our phones. We were now even further away that we should have been!

So backtrack we did, back alongside the railway, struggling into the headwind from hell. Thankfully we didn’t have too far to backtrack (about 3 kms, so a 6 km detour in total) and we found the turnoff we’d missed because we were going so fast.

The rest of the day was pretty much like that. Signs disappearing on us, but now at every turnoff we’d stop and double check, and this would make for slow riding, but at least we were getting regular breaks.

Then, after 72kms, we got to the town of Worms. This would have been the ideal place to stop, except we had accommodation booked. This is why it’s a bad idea to book in advance. Although it is a Friday night and we didn’t want to get stuck finding somewhere.

As we were bypassing Worms and girl said we must stop there and look around the town as it’s absolutely amazing. For some reason we thought it was an industrial town so it wasn’t on our radar. But we didn’t have time to stop, so we kept on going.

Then there was a bridge. A magnificent looking thing, kinda like the Tower bridge, but better, that we had to cross. Locals in this town seem to want to direct us places and a man said we can get to the bridge by heading up there. But the cycle route went down there. Anyway, we listened to the man, he’s a local he knows best and followed his instructions for crossing the bridge. But it led us to the walking part of the bridge (no bikes). So we had to go back down and follow the route signs.

Then there was a choice. We could stay on this side of the river and get to our hotel in 21 kms, but we’d have to catch a ferry across the river. Mike suggested it would be quicker on the other side, but I think he just wanted to ride across the bridge. So we crossed the bridge and on the other side the sign said 23 kms to the town. So we just added an extra 3 kms onto our trip there.

We continued on and it was a nice cycle ride through the country, completely off the main roads. We didn’t see any other cycle tourists, so I figured they must have gone the other way.

After about 17 kms we came to a sign which gave us two choices. To the left the town was 4.1 kms, to the right it was 6.3 kms. So of course we would follow the shorter route, I mean, who wouldn’t! And it was downhll!

We went flying down the hill, excited we were almost there. So far we’d clocked up about 92 kms for that day and were hot, tired and hungry. And then the path turned to gravel, then dirt, then suddenly we were cycling in a paddock! ‘WTF’, I said to Mike. ‘This isn’t a path.’

Not knowing what was to come of this track, I insisted we turn back to the sign and go the other way. So backtrack we did for the umpteenth time that day and followed the road into the town and the dreaded hotel we’d made the mistake of booking the night before.

We ended up doing 101 kms today and are shattered!