The weather was overcast and cool when we left Bad Waldsee – taking a countryside route through Wolfegg. When we reached the larger town of Wangen we decided to buy some food at the supermarket, as we had not had breakfast at our accommodation. Kris was still locking the bicycles up when it suddenly started to rain very heavily. He managed to get them to a dry place and we did our shopping and then over the road to a kebab/pizza shop. We ordered a pizza which was absolutely delicious. I had asked if they had coffee (they didn’t) and before we left the young woman who served us came and asked if we would like some Turkish tea. The tea was good and warming – when we offered to pay we were told it was on the house.

It had sort of stopped raining when we left, but we struggled to find the right bike path out of town because the signs didn’t show our route, and it started raining again. This time we sheltered in a wooden covered bridge and got directions from an Englishman living in Germany who passed on a bicycle.

After some more circling we found the bike route and followed it for a while – passing by Haslach, Neukirch and Langnau. Our route was convoluted, and our progress was slower than we expected.

The countryside was beautiful, even more hilly than the previous day – so there were some lovely vistas. We also began to see some dairy cows, some of them kept inside barns, and even a milk truck at one stage. Also some corn.

The last six kilometres was along the banks of the Argen river, which was pretty muddy because of the recent rain (so we were dirty again). We reached the Bodensee at Kressbronn and began to look for accommodation at Langenargen. There were lots of signs up along the road advertising rooms, but most of them had a sign up that the room was taken (zimmer belecht). It was after 5pm at this time, also a Saturday night. So we rode another few kilometres on to Friedrichshafen, a much bigger town, where there is lots of accommodation.

Here we had no better luck. The youth hostels, pensions and all normal hotels (hotels up to three stars) were full. Riding around town we noticed groups of strangely dressed people walking towards the dock area. We saw lots of black, lots of leather, and collars and masks. It turned out that there was a huge fetish weekend scheduled on a ship (for pictures see http://www.suedkurier.de/region/bodenseekreis-oberschwaben/friedrichshafen/Leinen-los-fuer-das-Torture-Ship;art372474,7944881). After some more determined searching we came to the conclusion that we are not going to find beds to sleep in. We considered camping but discounted it when there was a heavy downpour. We had a very cheap and small tent and lying wet in the tent seemed like an early visit to purgatory. Eventually we settled on sleeping in a bus shelter. We settled in at around 9pm, and gradually wore more and more of our clothing as the air cooled down. We slept fitfully. We had a tiny sample of Jeagermeister which we drank and we had some bread and cheese. Passers by ignored us, as one would when seeing vagrants sleeping rough.