The day was fine so we did a day ride along the wine road through Riquewihr, Ribeauville and St Hippolyte. There were many tourists from all over Europe; Dutch, Belgian and German. Ribeauville is an attractive village and particularly crowded. We had lunch at a small bakery-café, the service was friendly and the food unpretentious but good quality.

From St Hippolyte we climbed the four kilometer of steep road to the castle at Haut Koenigsbourg. The castle is imposing and looks ancient but was reconstructed in the early 20th century. It is impressive although as we couldn't leave the bikes unguarded we couldn't look round.

The next day was fine but with a stiff north wind that we battled for the 95km to Strasbourg. We started out on the Wine Route which follows the D18 secondary road and was fairly busy.

We had lunch at a restaurant in Gertwiller. We couldn’t understand the menu and so opted for the jambonneau, which turned out to be very fatty ham knuckle. We then cycled along quiet back roads across to the Rhine Canal near Obenheim. The canal path is paved through to Strasbourg.

Strasbourg cathedral is stupendously high, but we didn’t care for the architecture, as Margaret said “too many spiky things”.

The traffic in Strasborg is very heavy and although there is a network of bicycle paths it is fragmented, locals do not hesitate to cycle on quiet pavements.

The trams are very modern and frequent. They take bikes outside of rush hour, there is a large entry way that is level to the platform so if the tram is fairly empty it is very convenient. Unfortunately they can be busy at unpredictable times and getting on with a bike would be impossible.