We woke up feeling fine, and after the breakfast included with the hostel we felt well up to getting back on the bikes again after our little setback the day before. The only problem now was that we had lost a day, and were expected in Strasbourg tomorrow evening. It wasn’t impossible, we had budget five days with the final day to be a half day to give us a bit more time in the city, so if we did two big days now we could still make it. We decided to give it a go.
Thankfully riding along the Rhine is, as I’ve gone on at length about before, really not that difficult at all. From Bingen we had a strong tailwind all the way to Mainz which helped ease us back into the swing of things.

  

 
After Mainz though, the river turned south and the wind wasn’t quite as helpful. We jumped off the EuroVelo route for a bit to cute out some of the wider meanders of the river and shave off some distance.

 

 
These more inland routes took us through vineyards and small hamlets. The wind really stared to pick up in the afternoon. By evening we had made it to Ludwigshafen, a small city on the river. We had set getting to the other side as our goals or the day. The cycle route took us past industrial areas and into parks and housing estates. At some points in the parks we found big branches blown over the path, maybe from the particularly strong wind that day but we couldn’t be sure.

  
  
We got through Ludwigshafen and found an empty field in Altrip where we pulled in and set camp behind a patch of bushes. We had covered good ground, especially considering how bad we had been yesterday, and were on track to make it to Strasbourg tomorrow.