A taxing we will go ...

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When people talk about 'Cycling the Rhein', this is the section they talk about from Mainz down to Cologne. Just beyond Mainz, the river narrows as it passes through a range of hills, and because of this the current speeds up. I think the story goes, that some bright spark thought, 'Hey, the boats all go slowly here because of the currents, and I need some money, so I'll stop them and tax them for passing through my land". So he built a little castle, and put these bridges out in the river to slow everyone down, and proceeded to collect his tax.

All of his neighbours, rather than tell said so and so, to stop being a prat, and let the boats go past for free, thought this was a jolly good idea, and hence all we tourists today get to cycle down about 70kms of riverside dotted with castles as every Pierre, Frankfurter and Jones built themselves castles and proceeded to also toll every boat that went past. End of story as I understand it, and it may be factually incorrect in ever sense. Regardless there's a bloody lot of castles here abouts.

We left Mary in mainz as she wanted to have a look aronud, and we were lpanning on getting to Koblenz. We didn't get to Koblenz, ew got lost of course, but what would a day be if we didn't. We caught our first ferry acros the river today (wasn't too exciting) and then went into some town whose name I should know which was having a MASSIVE flower show. This we only know because it took us forever to get through the town, though the big plus for me were the two huge frankfurters I got for lunch. Yummy!!!!

My backside was feeling a little tender today (without sharing to much details, I discovered back in Mainz that my new seat badly brusied my backside and I've since ripped all of the skin off so after a days riding, I can barely walk around I'm in so much pain), and I was just loving the area, so we called an early day and camped on the side of the Rhein at a little town called Bacharach.

After cyclnig a further 7kms to the next town to get us some food (and once there realising she hadn't brought her bike lock) Christie had an afternoon snooze, while i just sat and watched all of the barges and ferries and other river traffic going up and down the river, accompanied by frequent trains. I only went to bed when the sunset. It was a magical way ot spend the day.

Oh, we also met our first Australian's since Cortona (in our first day in Italy).

A nice Dutch couple (who saw me sitting outside the tent) took pity on me and brought me over a cup of coffee, this brough a couple of South Astralians out of their tent next door when they heard me talking in English, and later on when we went for dinner we ran into another Tasmania who was trying to get rid of all her food as she was flying home the next day. We couldn't take it, so suggested the South Australians before going for our dinner ... so everyone was fed happily ever after.

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