I’ve finally had some decent time online to try & get up to date – hopefully I can process & summarise all that the last three days has held tonight, as after that I’ve no idea when I’ll have so much time to do so. Saturday: it was damp, but huzzah not raining when I decamped and back-tracked a little to some washrooms marked on my GPS – they seemed to be at the front of what I can only assume was one large Catholic Church camp. That must have been what I heard through the forest the night before; anyway, there were only a lot of rather old people around at eight in the morning.

Back on the GR5, the slipperiness continued as there were some sharp steep climbs that occasionally became too much to ride up – so it was on to pushing up hill and thoughts turned to what other weight I could shed. As I was not having much fun at only around 400 metres above sea level, I could see problems if I actually make it to any proper mountains. I remember one fantastic downhill run that went for an age – I try not to let my thoughts turn to how much more enjoyable it would be with a bikes I’ve ridden in the past and with good riding buddies.

Suddenly, I was on the outskirts of a town and the old houses were very grand indeed – there was some serious old money around. It was only when I got into the centre that it slowly dawned on me that I was in Spa – not sure how I didn’t see that coming, but that is the nature of my lack of planning! It was all a bit touristy, but there was a small classic car rally – the standard fare, but many more Triumphs than you would normally see – weird. On the subject of Belgian cars, they do seem to like a big American pick-up more than they should (I’ve seen so many more big Dodge Rams than in the UK) and Chevy seems to be doing OK over here recently; also, quite a few Dacias, which is amusing.

I had first-lunch and snapped a couple of pictures before rolling out of town without dipping in the famed springs.

The next section I completely fell out of love with the GR5 in its current state. For over an hour, I climbed three-hundred metres over only seven kilometres. The first part was through quite beautiful forest on single hiking trail, but the trail was just not very rideable as it was too narrow and rocky – which might have been OK in the dry. A lot of hike-a-bike was needed. I made a short detour on the road to a water source, but it was dry (?!), before rejoining the trail on the rest of the climb on forest double track. This was almost impassable in a different way – exceptional muddy or just small ponds really. Unfortunately, after all that the downhill was the same and not at all enjoyable when one is having to pedal through deep mud just go down. Perhaps understandably, this whole undertaking by myself started to seem ridiculous and thoughts turned to drier places (not that I knew where they were) and where I might actually be able to speak to people.

By the time I rolled into Stavelot for second-lunch, I was quite subdued as I’d decided that was enough of the GR5 and off-road riding for the time being. That was sobering as my whole set-up is geared to the off-road. I joined marked cycle-trails before Stavelot and after filling my water bottles at a small museum in a tiny village, Francorchamps, (which had an interesting, even if I couldn’t understand the text, display about the WWII occupation and then liberation of the village), I carried on. I was surprised to suddenly to be upon the Spa F1 track – the trail was above it, but I couldn’t see much detail through the trees. Stavelot also had some pretty big monuments to the liberation by the American 1st Army.

The cycle network was well developed here, it has been in most places in Belgium but less so in the hillier east, with big wide sealed paths. I diverted every so often to look at pretty towns. At Waimes, the route I was on joined the Vennbahn cycle route – there was a useful shelter to hide in from the torrential downpour. As I was to find out over the coming day, the Vennbahn is now the longest old rail-trail cycle route in Europe. The railway has only closed since the turn of the century – in its heyday it was used for hauling coal and iron ore. All along it there are many boards of historical photos, a lot about WWII – I couldn’t understand any of the three languages posted, but the pictures were interesting.

Into the lessening rain again, rather fed up with Belgium rain, wind and mud I started pondering going places where I could understand the language at least a little, have people to talk to and ride in mostly-dry. Italy and Canada appealed – Italy being the more practical option. However I was determined to get out of Belgium and not be completely beaten so early on.

Things changed, in some respects, quite quickly. Popping out at an old station there was a gathering of vintage tractors on a bi-annual outing. There were some beauties and then all smelled wonderfully of old machinery. The first that caught my eye was this gleaming MF 35 – as always. Then a gang of vintage motorcycles roared in – the stand-off and resulting brawl between vintage machinery that I was anticapting didn’t eventuate.

There were some more local examples as well.

While I was admiring the Massey Ferguson someone actually came up and spoke to me. Admittedly, he wasn’t Belgian. But it happened again, also not Belgian. Within ten minutes I’d had two offers of accommodation (I’m not sure I’ll make it to Munich). I kept bumping into and chatting to Jacqueline and Joseph (sp?) along the rail trail for a while. The pair of friends were out for the long weekend to introduce Joseph to cycle-touring before a planned September group tour in France. When they went looking for their hotel in St Vith, I tagged along – the draw of actual conversation over dinner too much. As it turned out, their hotel wasn’t where they thought – so we had a further ten kilometres off the trail to find it. But the hotel was happy for me to camp in their backyard and I got a shower (my bike even got a needed hose down – perhaps I should have had one too)!

After the lows earlier in the day, it was very well timed to have people to share a meal and wine with. I went to bed significantly happier – but still with no real idea how the next days and weeks will play out.

Another advantage of the terrain turning more forested is that it is a lot easier to find an inconspicuous spot in which to wild-camp – so that’s one less thing to think too hard about. I got a much earlier start than my late Antwerp start – but this just meant I was riding when the first heavy shower hit – which is better than packing up a wet tent. I hid in a bandstand in a village square and cooked my breakfast – ingredients left over from having to buy multiples more of things than I really wanted. With the rain gone again, the rest of the morning was very pleasant as I skirted around the town of Diest – the riding a good mixture of trail types and mostly dry by now.

Crossing the huge Albert Canal seems to have been a regular occurrence since leaving Antwerp. One sees all sorts of things floating up or down it and the locks are, of course, correspondingly large. It’s odd seeing barges that have enough space on the aft deck for the captain’s personal car to go along for the ride. This barge today caught my eye – mostly because I don’t often see large process equipment floating down canals.

My GR5 navigation was going pretty well, but it does have a sometimes infuriating tendency to try and take the seemingly longest possible route between two points. When I checked a website, it was raving about what a great long-distance walk it was – in the same way the Appalachian Trail is considered. But for all that, in two days and about two hundred kilometres I haven’t seen a single through hiker – or any walker out for more than a stroll. Perhaps they know better than I do about the weather or perhaps this is just a boring stretch and it gets much better further south. The road sections that provide pleasant respite on a bike must really drag by when walking. Still, I could keep going all the way to Nice, theoretically:

Water was proving difficult to find for most of the morning – when I finally found a tap on the side of a building, it was turned off. Eventually I found someone that looked helpful – after I’d interrupted the lawnmowing, biking chat ensued and water bottles filled. Just as I reached the centre of Hasselt around two o’clock, the heavens opened again in an almighty downpour that had all the streets emptied for quarter of an hour – the manager of the Indian restaurant kindly extended the restaurant’s awning that I and some others were hiding under. While it didn’t really rain much after that, it did rather put a damper on the rest of the day as everything was soaked and all the fun off-road trails became an exercise in avoiding large puddles and trying not to get me and my things covered in mud. About this time, the trail markings began hard to follow (this tends to occur in large towns/cities as there are so many more places that a blaze could be – so they are easier to miss). I started to take more direct, sealed routes in the hope that I’d stay a bit drier.

Feeding myself is not proving too expensive – I’m manage to fuel all the cycling for between fifteen and twenty euros per day. My calorie intake may need to increase when the hills finally arrive. But for now, I’ve decided cooking for just me is a big waste of time and effort for little saving. Cooking for oneself at home is OK at home, but can get a bit tedious; for me, cooking for myself around a little pot with no-one to talk to just intensifies the solo nature of this trip a little too much. Buying food and sitting eating it at least gives the illusion of some form of social contact!

Tonight’s wild-camping entertainment, while I stretched away the day’s mild efforts, was watching two squirrels chase each other back and forth through the tree-tops. I’d have finished my first set of GR5 waypoints, but the GPS was showing the forest running out – so it was best to set-up camp a bit earlier. I should be past Liege tomorrow – where I’m told the hills start. Looking forward to it, hopefully the last forecast I saw yesterday morning was wrong.

It’s amazing what a difference a reasonable night’s sleep and some brighter weather can make – also, the scenery and riding got more interesting, so that helps. Alas, I forgot that summertime-full campgrounds are not quiet places – so it was some time before I actually got some sleep. For my sanity, I decided that I’d have an easy morning – a lie in, a bit of internet time to keep this updated and then a leisurely look around the centre of Antwerp (there looked to be some impressive buildings across the water as I sat eating my dinner in a park the previous evening). In fact, as my riding goal for the day was only to bridge the twenty-odd kilometre gap between the end of the GR5A and the GR5 (this apparently is one of the premier long distance paths in the world – connecting Amsterdam and Nice,) I wasn’t really expecting too much.

The view across to Antwerp as the sun sets

My GPS was telling me that there was a bike path connecting the side of the harbour I was on with the city centre. But as it has been reliable so far, I was a bit confused as to why I couldn’t find it. Eventually, I clicked that the big brick box that seemed to serve no other purpose was in fact the top of an elevator shaft & the path must be a tunnel. A gargantuan elevator car in time laboured back to ground level and we descended under the harbour. It must be the longest foot/bike tunnel I’ve ever been in (and still clean somehow) – there since 1932, the original wooden elevators are still there.

The Guild Hall and Town Hall seemed, logically, to be the centre of town – but it was still early enough that it wasn’t too busy. I pottered about a bit – easier than in Brugge as there was much more street space and few tourists. My poor planning didn’t really give me much breakfast early on so I sat on a square watching the world go by, over various baked goods. It only took me three days to work out a few things I could do without, so after tracking down a Post Office (third time lucky) my load was the best part of two pounds lighter.

The Guild Hall tower

Town Hall – NZ flag top left

A better, sunnier, view of the Guild Hall tower

My route out of the city was just pieced together using whichever cycle trails helped to get me east. A lot of this a bit close to the noise of the motorway, so when I saw the red & white blazes painted I started following these. The same colour-coding that both the GR5 and GR5A use, I guessed this must be some sort of variant that would take me to the GR5 proper. Anyway, it took me away from busy roads and into plenty of woods – and past some palatial homes. A hidden stump jumped out and attacked my pedal viciously, sending me flying – after having sorted all that out (no damage to me or bike, so that’s good). Then it started to rain – for only twenty minutes and the only time I had to put my wet-weather gear on all day! Also the wind was much lighter today. Due to an oversight in my planning, until last night I didn’t have a GPS track for the GR5 (one of the main reasons for finding internet). But all I could find last night for the particular section I want to do is waypoints. With quite some distance between points – up to a mile, it means I’ve had to put into practice all I’ve picked up of the code of trail marking that is left by little red and white stripes on all manner of things. Generally, the stripes are painted (sometimes stickers) on posts (fence post, sign posts, lamp posts etc.) or just on trees. They’re at most intersections and then as often as who-know-who pleases in between – there doesn’t seem to be much consistency here, you can go for kilometres and not see one but at other times they’re on every second lamp post. Of course, things such as posts or trees aren’t particularly permanent, so one has to keep alert – I’m glad I’ve got the waypoints just to keep me going in the right general direction if I manage to lose the blazes.

I’m sure these blazes are much easier to spot at walking pace

All of a sudden – a very big building in the middle of nowhere. Or so it seemed when I’d been riding through the woods a lot. It wasn’t signed, so I didn’t work out what it was. My best guess is a monastery.

The riding today was much better – I even went up a hill! Of sorts – all manner of glee going down the singletrack on the other side, even if it wasn’t for long. Away from all the canals of the last few days, there’s much more of interest to look at – or so I think. And all the houses aren’t so annoyingly immaculate. I also managed to get out my cooking gear for the first time tonight – although it may have been a bit of false economy tonight, as cooking for one doesn’t save much money when all the packs come in sizes at least twice as big as you need. It’s four handfuls of pasta per person, isn’t it?