The day starts with a serious chat with the kids, why they must not mess about at bedtime since we've got a long time left to go and it only makes everyone grumpy. I'm sure it will have zero impact but I had to try.

The weather is shocking and far from ideal for driving down the Rhine castle spotting. Our first stop is to the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, the second largest in Europe. There has been a settlement here for over 5000 years and during the time as a fortress it has also been used as a prison (the children were shown this and asked to behave otherwise we might be leaving them here 😉).

As it happens today the fortress is hosting a festival full of circus style performers and since the tickets were more expensive than usual we decided we'd make the most of it and stay to watch the shows.

We saw some fantastic acts, Sara Twister was from Australia and along with contorting her whole body through a tennis racket (minus the strings) her finale was to fire an arrow from a bow using her feet whilst bent backwards over her head!

We'd left the picnic back at the van (thinking we'd not be here that long) so needed to get lunch. The kids loved having Nutella waffles and Al and I tried spatzle for the first time which was really tasty.

We then saw a variety show of gymnasts, jugglers and other acts mixed with theatre. It was brilliant and during this time the weather massively improved and out came the sun.

It was hard to convince the kids we should actually check out the fortress but eventually we managed to pull them away. Turns out there's not actually much to see but there were a couple of art exhibitions that were really interesting. Al and I both enjoy looking at photographs and there was a display of around 100 images that summed up modern day Germany. Perhaps it was not the most child friendly set of pictures with semi naked people and blow up dolls from various festivals.

Our original plan of slowly driving down the Rhine stopping at a few towns and castles along the way was now off the cards however there was a fairytale castle, Burg Sooneck, on the map which Liliya really wanted to visit so we headed straight over in the hopes of getting a photo.

When we got there it was closing in 45 mins so it's the fastest castle tour we've done which is a shame as it had an amazing kids trail with treasure chests to find but it broke up the journey nicely as we headed to a forest car park for the night.

On a side note we learnt a cute German phrase on our walk to the castle. A little girl fell over and ran crying to her mum who said schade marmelade. We looked it up and schade means what a pity and marmelade means jam so doesn't translate into other languages but it's a phrase that parents would say to kids after something bad happens and marmelade is added just because it rhymes.

The forest car park was a little gem and not having run for 18 days due to damaging my back I decided it was a lovely place to have a slow short run. Unfortunately I got a little carried away (mainly due to the fact it was all down hill and I'd seen a sign saying there was something 1.6km away. Turns out absolutely nothing, the run back was a hard slog but it was nice to be back doing something.

The kids were at least quiet if not asleep by the time I returned so Al and I took the opportunity to sit out and enjoy a beer /cocktail and some snacks.