A day of rest at last!!

We badly needed a day of recuperation and some time to catch up on the blog and with the domestic tasks and odd jobs - so today has been it!

We slept like logs after our mammoth bike ride yesterday and when Steve was struggling yesterday to keep up with me cycling I took no notice and thought he was merely unfit. Today however he has checked the bikes over as routine maintenance and found that his back brake has been binding on the wheel. Poor soul has had to work twice as hard to get half as far. Also his front tyre had blown and was perished so we had to buy a new one today.

So we had a quiet day at the site - did the laundry - then the thunderstorm started and we had a load of wet washing to contend with. I wrote the blogs while I waited for the wash cycle to finish. Steve was maintaining the bikes and the heavens opened. Finally we gave up and drove into Kastellaun to buy a new tyre and oil for the gears and the chains on the bikes - and had another shop in Aldi's to stock up on some more of their lovely wine. We bought six bottles of wine, one bottle of Cava, meat, fruit, cheeses and some cold meats and the bill was only 25euros!! Good eh? We also succombed to some of Germany's famous cakes - they are everywhere in the shops - huge gateaux, pies and flans and all the Germans seem to have them with coffee. We just had to sample some - a huge piece of apple pie and another of equal size of rhubarb tart - only 1.20 euro each. We had them as dessert after our tuna and sweetcorn pasta dinner - delicious.

We feel refreshed and ready for more action tomorrow. As we have visited the Rhine we may well do the Mosel tomorrow. We are nestled in the valley between the two in an idyllic spot. We have been told there are caves along the Mosel where we can do some wine tasting - sounds good to us. And we haven't managed to get to the fishing lake yet.

Steve wants me to say that his favourite German word of today is biergarten - that says it all I think.

As there is so much to do around here and it is so beautiful we have decided to stay another night before moving on. We don't care what the weather is like as we have waterproofs - although it has brightened up a lot as the day has progressed anyway.