Our day five campsite is, as I may have mentioned, so ridiculously needed and welcome that I almost lose my mind when I see that there is a swimming pool….regrettably a quick push on the locked door brings the sharp crash back to reality!

It’s a great campsite to be honest and it clearly specialises in the bikepacking traveller as evidenced by the sea (well three that I could see) of MSR tents (like ours) and a panorama (two!) of our Hellinox  chairs. We get chatting to one couple who are cycling to Rome from their home in Germany but they seem to lose interest in us when they hear that what we are up to far surpasses that and also that I am by this point incapable of stringing together full sentences.

When we set off in the morning the terrain is thankfully manageably bumpy to begin with and then as flat as you like across the absolutely massive Rhine valley and so relatively easy going. As we cross the Rhine we finally leave France FOREVER!! Au revoir monsieur le francais!

Shortly after arriving in Germany proper we do try our luck with yet another “route barree” again (because we are stupid and haven’t learnt our lesson) and low and behold we get turned around yet again, “quelle surprise” sorry I mean “Was fuer eine Ueberraschung” (which just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it?) although fortunately this time it’s maybe only 2km out of our way (although there was still much angry shouting…and that was just Marc!)

Sometime around the middle of the day I see a text pop up on my phone (which is strapped to my handlebars) which looks like it is from Anek Lines and it also looks like it says your carefully thought through plan is now rubbish because we have cancelled your ferry from Venice to Patra…..I don’t have my glasses on and clearly that must be nonsense so I simply assume that I have misread it….I will of course check it later.

As we enter the Black Forest and mile 70 for the day the massive climbing begins and it is huge (and I mean soul crushingly huge) and unrelenting.  We do manage to drag ourselves up a handful of 18% climbs but what Marc can’t see  but i can courtesy of the Garmin also on my handlebars is that the last 12 miles of our planned day is also all redonkously up.

At the base of the final 12 mile climb we make the potentially adventure saving decision to instead stop at the campsite we have just passed, stop for the day to rest, recover and prepare for tomorrow’s onslaught. We know we have the climb from hell to start with tomorrow but the remaining 100+ miles we are left with to our campsite on Bodensee should (should!!) be mostly down….please God!

Decision made we set up camp in the quite frankly beautiful Simonwald at a luxurious 1730. Tomorrow is going to be super big but we can definitely do it.

Our evening ends somewhat philosophically as we seek to answer the age old question “what is sadness? Following much deliberation our conclusion is that it is playing fusball on your own.

Ps - the bastard ferry has indeed been cancelled!