Cycling adventures across Britain and beyond
With the End to End completed, today I cycled from St Vith to the train station at Spa to head home. To my delight, I realised I could do the entire 35-mile trip on the RAVeL network: Belgium’s excellent paved, wide, smooth, car-free cycleway system, generally on towpaths or railtrails. Most of the day there…
I completed my Belgian End-to-End with a 17-mile hop to the border this morning. Well, Belgium’s pretty good at handling hops. It was all very German feeling, of course: the look and feel of the houses, chalets and forests, hilly landscapes, and car dealerships. The ‘official’ easternmost settlement is Krewinkel, a village that was described…
A sandwich of a route today: two bread-and-butter railtrails on the outside, with a meaty middle of Belgium’s highest point. All of this took me from the French-speaking heart of the country to its German-speaking minority eastern fringe. So instead of un sandwich, make that ein belegtes Brot. The forecast wasn’t anything to write home…
A colourful day of mostly riverside riding today, the colours being forest green and cement factory grey. Yes, the Meuse is a grand waterway, but like most of Belgium, industry is never far away. But first I went through the Centre of Belgium. The country’s exact centroid – as determined by their equivalent of the…
A functional day today, all on good main-road-cycle-paths, through Brussels and across the great linguistic divide. And all in perfect weather: sunny but not glaring, warm but not hot, breezy but not windy. I glided along canalsides from my Gent hostel with a continental buffet breakfast inside me, with a Dutch twist, in the shape…
It was too early to explore De Panne’s adventure park, Plopsaland, as I left. In a cartoonishly Belgian touch, it’s named after a gnome called Plop. Not a real gnome, obviously, but a character from a children’s TV series. I wonder what effect this sort of thing has on shaping national character. Belgium was, after…
Ah, Belgium. Where beer, chips and chocolate are culture. And three countries for the price of one – the Dutch-, French-, and German-speaking ones. Which may explain why it feels so expensive. But I’ve been here many times, always enjoyed myself hugely, and now I’m doing the place properly with an End to End. Which…
The final day of the Slovakian End to End proved perhaps the most enjoyable cycle-touring of the lot. Especially for fans of wooden churches, such as Eastern Slovakian Orthodox adherents, termites, those with an aversion to nails, and now, cycle bloggers. Indeed, I saw three fine full-size examples in situ today, as well as several…
Another short, easy, mostly flat day in scenery that could have been Lowlands Scotland. Especially for the frequency of Co-ops: yes, shops are open again after the Easter break, so I could buy proper food on the go from the ubiquitous village potraviny. After a miserable day of petrol-station crisps and biscuits yesterday, my usual…
It’s Easter still. And everything was. Still, I mean. All shops closed, all roads (almost) empty. The only refreshment possibilities were on petrol station shelves, in packets or with ring-pulls. I set off from Prešov through silent, echoing retail parks and through silent, echoing villages. In one village, though, I did see a curious Slovak…