D+27 Sigmaringen (Germany)

---

Hi all,

Today we are in Sigmaringen on the river Danube or as they call it here in Germany "Donau" taking a well deserved rest day. Time now seems to be flying past. It's 4 weeks tomorrow that we started the trip and we can't believe how far we have come already. We have clocked up 871 miles which is a little short of the 1000 a month we wanted to achieve but we have crossed some big mountain ranges and the weather for the first 3 weeks was not kind to us. We were quite pleased to leave France. The part we travelled through was very industrialised up until the last 3 days when the scenery changed for the better (and got much hillier). Also there were not as many camp sites therefore we had to go into hotels a lot more than we intended. Although much more expensive than camping they made a nice change. One of the disadvantages of cycling in the rain for long periods is that it increases the chances of getting saddle sores. I got a massive one - well big enough to hurt every time I sat down. I had heard that the cream they use for baby nappy rashes works well, so off we go to the local Pharmacy to see if we could find any. Anyway to cut a long story short we found some and took it to the counter to pay for it. The lady looked at us and said in french - do you know what this is for? We just looked aat her and held up our cycling helmets, she replied - ahh. Anyway it worked really well and I haven't had any problems in that area since.

The climb over the Black Forest Mountains was quite emotional for some! It rained all day and to top it all when we finally reached the pass the cloud base was low so we couldn't see anything. We must have encountered about 20 switchbacks and each one got steeper and steeper the higher we climbed. As we turned the final bend (we didn't know at this stage that it was the final bend) Joy burst into tears. Later she said it was the emotion of reaching the top but I think she was so upset of not knowing where the top was. Anyway we a nice 10 mile run down hill the other side to a town called Freudenstadt. Thats where our problems really started. We couldn't find the Hotel we intended to stay that night. In the end we decided to go to a camp site about 6 miles further on. At this stage it was starting to get very hilly again. At one stage I lost Joy who had decided to take the route of least resistance and subsequently went another way. We finally found each other but by this time it was getting quite late. At the next village we saw a sign for the hotel we had been looking for pointing up an incredible steep hill. We pushed the bikes to the top only to find that there was no rooms available. I did my John McEnroe impression - you cannot be serious but apparently ther was a big function on that night and all the rooms were taken. The owner took pity on us when she discovered that we had pushed the bikes up the hill and phoned the next hotel and arranged a room for us.

So far we are very impressed with Germany. We have now followed 2 cycle paths for 3 days which have passed through some beautiful country side. The camp sites are very clean, the food is great and the beer is cheap and tastes great. Most of all the people are very friendly and helpful. Although we are finding Internet cafes in the larger towns we still can't upload any more photos at the moment.

---