For anyone on the verge of a heart attack or those who just like über tranquility for the hell of it, Reichenau Island, near Konstanz in southern Germany, is the place to be.

It’s listed as a World Heritage site for its monastries so that was ostensibly our reason for biking out there, but more importantly, we (and by we, I mean I), needed the exercise. Predictably, though, the rental man hand-picked for me a bike specially constructed for midgets, where my knees were alternately up around my ears and dragging on the gravel.

Also predictably, we hung a misguided left and found ourselves on the ’scenic route’, weaving past the sewerage dump; once on Reichenau, though, we only shattered the peace once when I tried the ‘Look Mum, no hands’ trick and ploughed face-first into a greenhouse.

The real fun started in the evening when we rode out to Konstanz’s second island, Mainau. The catch here is that it’s €15 entry during daytime but free after 7.30pm. It seems they try to deter people from night entry by not putting up one streetlight (and our bike-rental man was in on the ploy too, by giving us bikes with broken lamps).

Safely on the island at last, we popped the red wine then realised it couldn’t be re-corked so we’d have to polish off the whole bottle, and quick smart too because the island closed for the night at 9pm.

Needless to say by the time we rode home, heavily under the influence and in pitch blackness, we were both in need of quite the Dettol bath.