Tank Tours

All good things come to an end (more about that later). Today's stage along the River Moselle was a late addition into our itinerary; more opportunistic than anything else. We decided to spend a couple of days in Luxembourg, 1 day visiting Luxembourg city, (which is one big construction site at the moment) which we did yesterday and 1 day to ride somewhere, which is what we did today on a seriously hot day with the temperatures hitting 38deg. Early start to catch the 9.05am bus to Schengen, where the treaty to open up the European borders was signed, yes, local buses to take bikes. Un loaded our bikes on arrival at Schengen and made our way a few 100 meters to the magnificent bike path on the Luxembourg bank of River Moselle; the other bank is Germany, to the town of Trier (Karl Marx's birthplace) in Germany. Must admit the river appeared a tad untidy but the landscape of vineyards were breath taking. Stopped a few time to take some photos of birdlife, towns an...

Early start to take the train from Bruges to Arlon (more about that later), mind you we took our time with the breakie. Anyway, we got to the station with half an hour to spare before the arrival of our train. Why Arlon, you may ask? We always planned to visit Luxembourg and spent a long time to figure out how to fit it into our schedule and in the end it made the most sense to catch a train from Bruges to Arlon which is pretty close to the Luxembourg border. So there we were at the station on a public holiday in Belgium on a beautiful day. Must admit the weather has been very kind to us. Overall, Belgium has surprised us, especially the people were very friendly and kind, the towns of Ghent and Bruges and the cycling infrastructure.  We had one change of trains in Brussels Sud and weren't impressed when we learnt that there was no lift to get us and our bikes to the platform. So moi had to walk the bikes loaded with panniers, down and then up to the new platf...

It's called a rest day but in reality it isn't. From time to time we take a day off the tour to discover a town and surroundings and on this occasion, that is exactly what we did. Early breakie of muesli, greek yoghurt and milk and we were good to go by 9.30am on our bikes. Making our way through the town on cobbled stone roads (not the most comfortable way to ride a bike) to the railway station, noticed how deserted the town looked compared to yesterday. Stopped a few times as you do to take these photos. Slowly made our way to the station to buy tickets for tomorrow's 4 hour train ride to Aarlon for the short 36km ride from there to Luxembourg, our final destination where we are planning to spend 3 mights before making our way by public transport to Zurich. To date, we have ridden 1,541km (including today's rides) with one short stage to go from Aarlon to Luxembourg and a planned 70km on one of our rest days in Luxembourg. Back to today, Be...

It was an interesting rest day in Ghent; the town centre was in the process of getting transformed into a big festival; the Ghent Festival which lasts 10 days, 140,000 people attend daily bearing in mind that population of Ghent is 80,000. Gives you some idea on the size and popularity of the festival. The atmosphere was great and the countdown for the 6pm, start had begun.We didn't go but heard from reliable sources that town centre is packed, shoulder to shoulder but very little trouble if any and it's on 24 hours a day. Wish we had the energy but alas it's not for us. A late start to the day, after a delicious breakie, prepared by Francine, our host, we got going around 10am with a threatening sky for the short ride to beautiful Bruges (more about that later). Luck was on our side as we didn't experience any rain. The ride itself along the LF5 was one for the purist tourers, beautiful, as it is in heaven.  A few kms out of Ghent, stopped ...