Two years ago I did Belgium End to End by doing it Side to Side. I love cycling the place because of its excellent cycle paths and its highbrow cultural experiences such as beer, chips, chocolate and comics. So now I’m doing it Top to Bottom. This will take me from Essen – not the German one, obviously; this one’s a small town just north of Antwerp – to Torgny, a village sandwiched in hills down south between France and Luxembourg.
Thanks to my folding bike, I had breakfast in York and dinner in Antwerp. Eurostar – the quickest and easiest way to get to the continent – does in theory take full-size bikes, but it’s cumbersome, expensive and unreliable. Folding bikes, however, are free to take on. Once folded, it’s just part of your luggage. So I could have coffee and pastries at home in bed, get an early morning train from York, hop on the Eurostar to Brussels, take the train from there to Essen, and start my T2B at about 5pm on the same day I’d set off.
Benelux borders are rarely conspicuous affairs, and I had to hunt a bit to find any signposting at all showing where the Netherlands finished and Belgium began. Usually the only way you know you’re in BE is a cryptic blue sign with technical info for lorries. There may be a ‘Welcome to Flanders’ equivalent if you’re lucky.
The crossing isn’t obviously shown by differences in quality of cycle infra, either. The Netherlands’ red and white bike signs disappear, replaced by Belgium’s blue’n’white ones, but there’s still a network of still wide, smooth, two-way, car-free, pink tarmac paths with dashed lines down the middle.
There are a lot of e-bikes. I did a count of all the cyclists coming the other way as I non-e-pedalled the twenty miles from Essen to Antwerp. In just about an hour I saw exactly 100: 73 on e-bikes and 27 not, most of them being roadies in lycra. I didn’t know whether to feel smug on my manually operated machine, or silly: there was a strong headwind and I wouldn’t have minded a bit of battery assistance.
The preponderance of e-bikes is understandable. This is one of Belgium’s (and the Netherlands’) many F-routes: ‘fietsnelweg’, or ‘bike-fast-route’. Straight and continuuous, usually with priority at junctions so you can zoom through without stopping, these routes enable longish-distance commutes by bike. If you have an e, you can zip between towns on these routes faster than on a car, untroubled by headwinds or post-work fatigue. Many clearly do.
These car-free lanes took me all the way to Antwerp city centre, and right up to my hostel front door.
It was all a very stress-free and pleasant way to start my Top to Bottom. Antwerp’s fine historic squares were glowing in the evening sun. As was my stomach after a particularly tasty kebab and couple of pokey Belgian Tripels. A very nice start to my trip.
Miles today: 20
Miles since Essen: 20