The Rhine

Good afternoon from Darmstadt. So, we are well aware that we are very lucky people indeed. We are also aware that over the last few days we've had some excellent cycling in sunny weather on good bike paths as we followed the Rhine south from Köln. Bob the trailer, our new friend, is brilliant: he follows us wherever we go, carries all our stuff, pushes us uphill and doesn't go wondering off up curbs.

But nobody wants to read that, or that we're really chuffed to have just tipped 1000km yesterday, so here's the juicy stuff that you do want to read: Rear wheel spokes pinging all the way down the Rhine, we got the bike to a bike shop where a very nice man charged us a lot of money to replace all the spokes and rebuild the wheel. Fortunately the nice man's bike shop was not too far from a riverside campsite with a good bar and good views across the Rhine, so we rested up in the sun for a while, read books, worked on making our tans look like we haven't just been wearing vests and cycle shorts all year and walked up a very big hill to visit the nearest Schloss ruin.

That episode over and with the bike and trailer finally behaving, we departed the nice campsite down a really good stretch of the Rhine - a valley full of castles, vineyards and timbered buildings, and Koblenz was lovely. The next day was blisteringly, overbearingly, unbelievably hot and we had lots to complain about. Sophie even forgot to eat and drink enough, so she had even more to complain about. Continuing once the day had cooled slightly, we arrived late at a private campsite populated exclusively by spherical people with sun burn. The round red people allowed us to camp on the wrong side of the fence on the condition that we only used the cold, dirty beach showers and that we fed the hordes of local mosquitos. This we did ably, given their ability to bite through clothes and we are still itching as a result. We awoke in the middle of the night to discover a dramatic change in the weather and donned waterproofs this morning to bid farewell to the Rhine and ride east to link up with a bend in the Main river.