We drove through the fading light through the flatness, with the occasional windmill.

I think the Netherlands has some great cities but we didn’t see any of them. Certainly not through the back of the car because it was full of bags and boxes. It seems like some giant agri experiment. Just fields. No people.

We made good progress through the boredom. Ticking off one bit of motorway after another until we finally reached the German border and decided to call it a day. Well, night, at Rheine.

We pulled into a one-horse town in driving rain, struggling to detect the exit from the autobahn. We saw one woman walking down the high street and asked her for directions to a hotel. Her English wasn’t great but she tried her best.

Through a combination of exhaustion and disorientation we got a little lost within a few hundred metres. But who should pop up but the German woman. This time in her car. She pointed us in the right direction: a rather posh looking hotel.

Apparently, Sarah asked the guy on reception how much a room cost. When he asked her how much she’d like to pay, he offered to find us somewhere. He even made the booking. It was a motel close by.

Getting to this motel proved difficult because it was hidden behind what looked like a convenience store slash garden centre and dwarfed by a huge sign for an amusement arcade. Even the guys at Macdonalds across the road claimed to be unaware of its existence.

Fifteen minutes and a few bits of advanced motoring later, we pitched up in reception. It was actually a truck stop and burly drivers were tucking into beer and sausages, just to keep the stereotype alive. It looked like a dive but the woman behind the counter was delightful and the price was about the same as a Travelodge.

I was worried about the bikes and she wouldn’t let us take them in the room. However, she did offer a great solution to our problems. She gave me a ticket to the truck park around the back of the kitchens and then met me at the door, wheeling our bikes into their private area, inside the building.

The room itself was spotless. Daisy was impressed with the bunk bed, not least because there was a tiny packet of Haribo on each pillow and she claimed two.

It was not an unpopular truck stop, so we had to keep the window closed to avoid annoying Daisy. So, a sweaty night.