A humid morning with sun shining as we set off gets us thinking could be time to send the winter woollies back to oz.My panniers seem unusually heavy, please  no more supermarket visits.As we had  our own apartment last night it now means I am overloaded with our excess shopping;cans of herrings, bananas and nectarines plus a packet of tea bags .Half the places we stay in dont have a kettle so the tea bags are totally ridiculous.Supermarkets are now officially banned.

Our first glimpses of castles perched on steep slopes made me realise that we might never finish cycling the Rhine with the frequent photo stops. I was being very good today checking hubby hadnt disappeared, but when we were progressing at 10kms an hour the photos had to stop for a while.Hopefully not too many more nuclear power stations to take photos of either!

The sky darkened and thunder began to roll, wet weather gear was donned. Those wet suit bootees proved ever a challenge and in my efforts to get them on quickly pulled off the very tag tbat is meant to help you. We pedalled on as lightening flashed around us our first real test of wet weather gear. Other cyclists had pulled over and were huddled under whatever shelter they could find but not us intrepid ozzies.

Wet and bedraggled although the feet were still dry we pedalled into Anderdan searching for lunch. We hadnt factored in Mothers Day so there was everyone nicely dressed up going out for their 3 course special mothers day lunch. Restaurants were totally full, we sat in one for 20 mins in the outside area under cover so not to upset other guests but were ignored. We left as did other cyclists. We headed into the centre of town and decided the best way to get food was to say we wanted the 3 course mothers day option.This worked but the service was so slow as this restaurant was also full, lunch was very nice but took 2 hours. Luckily the restaurant had a good supply of blankets so we were able to sit there and warm up huddled in blankets, maybe we wont be sending our winter gear back just yet.

We decided not to risk the difficulty of finding accomodation in a city Koblenz and settled for a hotel before Koblenz overlooking the Rhine, so we can settle back and watch boats go by from the comfort of our room.

560kms completed although only 466kms off our actual route so not even at the half way point yet. Large markers show us the distance to where the Rhine enters the Bodensee, daunting..

Www.rheinhotel-larus.de