For an englishman, it is almost reassuring to discover that the weather isn't perfect abroad. We had one or two really rather wet days, but none that stopped us from doing our thing. Mostly, the weather was warm with 'sunny intervals', with one or two real beauties. 
A beautiful walk along a ridge above a series of stone columns, locally called the Twelve Apostles. Sam, who is precise about this kind of thing, counted fourteen.
A holiday in Germany this year, the Altmühltal, part of Bavaria. This was a bit of an expedition into the unknown for us. Altmühltal turns out to be a little bit like the Wye valley.
But first, the journey down; I had forgotten how to drive on German motorways; the most entertaining are the two-lane no-speed-limit sections. Here, the speed on the inside lane is about 60 mph (which feels a bit slow), and the speed in the outside lane is about 110 mph (which is above my fear factor). I start out by overtaking a slow lorry, with the road behind apparently empty, only to find a black Audi with its headlights on materialise behind me.
We had a fine day canoeing along the river Altmühl. We collected our boats from a wiry little old guy in a back street of Beilngries, who drove his carlike a maniac to get us to our start in Kipfenberg.
After several excursions along the Dordogne and the river Wye, we're getting reasonably competent. It was my second try at the double kayak with Tess; lots more fun than the rather more majestic progress of a canadian canoe.
In any case, this was a 'slow build'; we started of with just a few, and more people kept dropping in as the evening wore on. I sat next to a very good lady bodhran player.
