Day Five - Scheiße, es ist heiß!!

Today’s blog will I am afraid be a little photo heavy and narrative light…..we have arrived safely at our campsite but it has been a long, exhausting and above all else stupidly hot day.

As is now almost the norm we had campsite pasta beneath one of the many many schloss we have seen (I assume the people who live there are called schlossers?) and turn in for the night around 2200.

We know tomorrow is a big day (c94 miles expected) so decide to set the alarm for 600 so we can get away early. No alarm of course is necessary because we are both awake around 4am AGAIN!

Once we have take the tent down and spread all our stuff over as wide an area as possible we pack it all up again and head off around 730…our earliest pedal turn so far.

Now we are on the East side of the Rhine we know the cycle route requires us to cross back to the West via a ferry 7 miles down the road and then back to the East again in Mainz. We arrive at the ferry just before 8am only to find that on Saturdays it doesn’t start unit 1000am! Not ideal then! Given the total lack of other ideas we decide that rather than wait for 2 hours, which would totally ruin our day, we push on along the East side in the hope we find another crossing point. Thankfully around 10 miles later we do and its another ferry that not only is running this early in the day but is about to leave ….in a moment of perfect timing we roll on and set sail across the Rhine!

Once back on dry land we head south down the EuroVelo 15 route and it’s smooth, fast going for the next hour or so. We always aim to have second breakfast at or after we have done a third of our expected miles for the day. As we start to think about stopping a fantastic oasis of foodie loveliness emerges and we pull over and indulge…..it’s only scrambled eggs and bacon but it’s our best meal out since The Alma in Harwich.

I haven’t mentioned up to now that it is hot and by “hot” I do mean “HOT!!!!”. A quick check suggests it’s around 31 degrees which is really not what you want to be cycling in ever let alone when you are trying to cover +90 miles.

When we reach Mainz we cross the Rhine for the final time and say goody bye to it as we strike off due East along the Main. We pause many, many times for shade, for food and for water…..the further we go the harder and harder it gets….it is really draining. One of our many pauses is in the centre of Frankfurt where a cold Diet Coke hits the spot. I should mention that I am surprised how happy I appear in that photo …inside I am crying loudly!

We keep pushing on and on, more and more exhausted and more and more frustrated every time another set of roadworks sends us seemingly eleventy billion miles in the wrong direction. Eventually as mile 99 rolls over we fall into our campsite absolutely spent….it has been the longest hardest day of our trip so far….please god I sleep beyond 4am!