A change of plan. The notion of repeating our usual Nijmegen-Maassluis return route has been shelved after discovering that there are engineering works on the Dutch railways. PLUS the fact that temperatures are rising and the wind continues from the east: so much more attractive to reverse-ferret and turn it into a tailwind.

So we traced our revolutions from Schermbeck to Wesel, but this time part-following the Wesel-Datteln Kanal (which goes into the Dortmund-Ems Kanal – thus enlarging my unused mental map of the German canal network). And now we are back in Xanten, in a proper hotel with a nice Grauburgunder and no superfluous beds cluttering up the space.

There’s a great deal of repetition about this holiday, but I still enjoy the sensation of travelling under my own steam. Today’s tailwind and views reminded me of previous cycling holidays when my average speed was rather higher than it is today. Something about the haze of the sunshine on the river and embankment tops brought old holidays to mind too. And Xanten offers other comforts as well.

A route that criss-crossed others that I have navigated around here. A mixture of main roads, dull farmland, crossing the Rhine at Wesel and then a disused railway line almost to Schermbeck. Where there is a hotel – scrupulously clean – and four beds crammed into one room and white wine that tastes slightly of vinegar. But never mind: I am clean and fed and the bicycles are safely stabled.

Less than 18km by the direct route, but we managed to turn it into a very slow 44km. The slowness I blame on sandy paths and serendipitous discoveries. We returned to the woods and discovered that the Brachter Wald nature reserve we were cycling through was once the largest ammunition dump of the British Army of the Rhine, and before that a store for the German army’s aviation fuel during WWII. It was vacated in 1996, and active conservation since then, combined with its earlier military restrictions, means that it has a wealth of rare flora and fauna. Some of the fauna must be pretty big: to cross one large area, we had to push our bikes through enormous turnstiles to keep the freilaufende Tiere inside. We saw one fallow deer: with that kind of build-up, I had expected more.

It was a sunny Sunday and lots of people were out cycling, strolling and walking their dogs along roads built for tanks and amongst enormous sand embankments built as shelter walls around the ammo dumps: not quite swords into ploughshares, but close enough.

Nettetal just seems to be a collection of small towns clustered around a line of ponds – something to do with former peat-mining? – and the river. It has a hotel: a good enough tourist attraction for us. A good, basic, family-run hotel (the mother and daughter remind me of youth hostel wardens of 40 years ago) that belongs to an earlier time. It once catered for commercial travellers (do they still exist?) and all the other guests are over 70.