AND SO TO GERMANY

We left you hanging on the border - well straddling it if I remember.......
It is a little disappointing not having to be checked out and in to each new country or at least knowing when you have crossed a border but in this instance we knew for sure that we were now in country number 10 on our journey.
One of the first amusing things we came upon in the first village we entered was some hay bale art -

We are always finding interesting things in the strangest places, and this was something we just came across carrying sand from a quarry to the river - no one around but the conveyer rolls on.....

 and the other view...

Shortly after we got our first view of what was to become our constant companion for the next few weeks - the mighty Rhine river....

Along the way there are all sorts of things that we never expected to see - near the town of Xanthen there are Roman ruins......

And I am not quite sure which town this was but there was yet another great set of old city gates!!

We often had the choice of taking the trail on either side of the Rhine and when there is no bridge to cross then you can often take a ferry....

All through Europe we have come across lots and lot of religious statues.  Some are elaborate,some very plain, but this one was just a little different..

We then traveled on to one of our many campsites, this one just happened to be on Bistlers Island, and was the largestcampsite in Europe so we were told.. This is a site map.

For such a large camp it was totally unorganised when it came to where to pitch your tent and we were just lucky enough to get a small patch big enough for our tent and a little area to sit and eat!

But the 'peice de resistance' had to be the amenities block -it was like entereing some sort of Roman Baths......... Blocks and  blocks of mens and  ladies Loos,and theshower block went on forever.........
They even had the Marble statues.....

And a full on Supermarket with a cold room for beer to rival Dan murphy's - incredible!!
BTW the red arrow is showing people where to extinguish their buts!  -cigarette -

As the Rhine meanders along, so does the cycle route and we often found ourselves crossing to the opposite side -some of the bridges were elaborate and others...

 were even more elaborate!

We had not encountered a lot of rain since crossing the channel, but had decided after our efforts in the UK, that if it did rain then we would just shelter, sit it out and wait for it to stop.  We didn't want to fight the elements any more,so one morning when the rain started, we just set up a shelter and decided to have a cuppa...

but there was someone else with the same idea and we soon saw him heading towards us......

And he enjoyed a bit of sticky bun we fed him...

We also found this crazy water feature in the middle of a town square.......

And this was the front view....correct me if I'm wrong but to me it looks like a very well endowed woman clinging to a very large blue chicken????

 At some campsites we added our 'basher' for a bit of extra shelter, which in effect gave us another 'room' especially good when raining...

there were fields where you could buy flowers by the stalk on the honour system at 1 euro per stalk.....Dame Edna would have loved it....All Gladiolis!!

We continued to see some wonderful statues.

and fountains...

and of course our favourite forest paths

where we continued to discover these sort of buildings in the middle of nowhere...

and of course there was always the Rhine...our constant companion......where travel varied from the up market cruise boats..

to the not so up market.....

and of course there were always the 'themed' boats -this one was called Moby Dick..

And we met this little fellow Aussie on a ferry while crossing the Rhine..... Not sure if his visa is still current  but he seemed pretty happy and in no hurry to go anyplace else...

But we could not stay and join him as we had places to go and people to see....