We woke up to more rain in the morning. The caravan park was bleak, the bikes needed to be packed and the wet tents folded away. Everybody quietly got ready and we left at around 7:30.
We went into the main high st in search of coffee and breakfast. We found a nice coffee shop, but they didn't open til 8, so we waited outside. We took out the map and started to sort out the crib sheet for the day.
The rain had forced us to alter the route, so now we were scrolling down the page looking for anywhere within 100 miles east of us beginning with a 'b'. The place we found was called Bad Benthiem, so we decided to head there. After coffee and postcards home we moved on to a bakery which had now opened, serving sandwiches and croissants. We made use of their toilets too.
Weirdly the kind lady who had helped us find a campsite the night before walked into the bakery and asked how we slept! This was a rare coincidence as she lived 12 miles away, and it was 8am.
We left the border town at around 9, and head northeast in the direction of Bremen, we ideally wanted to get there within 2 days, but the weather was slowing us right down and we were still 220 miles from there. We passed through a number of dull German towns (notably entering 'The Kingdom of Pleasure' in one instance) before crossing the border back into The Netherlands as we snaked our way over the landscape. The rain was on and off today, not as bad as the day before, but still enough to slow us down a bit.
We stopped for lunch in a small place called Isselburg, then carried along through the borderlands. We had to cross a huge river, which cost us lots of miles trying to find a bridge, and in fact the mileage for the day was double what it was supposed to be in the end (goodbye to the idea of Bremen in two days).
Once we crossed the border for the 3 time that day we were back in The Netherlands, and annoyingly would be spending the night there as now it was getting late too. The location was really nice, lots of woodland and peace and quiet. It did mean however that we had to ride about 5 miles of dirt track which wasn't very smooth going.
We found a campsite by a lake and struggled with a newspaper which said London on the front and had a big picture of fire.
The campsite had hot showers, a washing machine and WI-FI. so we were pretty comfortable there although a bit overlooked by the neighbours. We sadly hadn't made it to Bad Benthiem, but we did choose a campsite called Berkelhook! we were now 141 miles from Bremen, and 395 miles from Berlin.
Total miles: 72
Total time: 10h 45m
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