Friday, 11 June, 2010
We said our farewells to the group of volunteers, quite touching actually how welcoming they have been and how apologetic about the plumbing hassles of the night before. So encouraging to see this dedicated and idealistic bunch of young people trying to make a difference.
We had a quick spin around town, market day made it not so quick and we took pictures of some of the architecture which appealed to us:
The first bit of our route took us along the Sambre, very scenic, lots of old buildings and fine views of the river until the inevitable pull out of the valley.
The route we had figured out proved to be a success, a long succession of country roads past many hectares of mainly wheat and sugar beets and many other things of which I do not know the English name, interspersed with the villages who all have the church, mairie and war memorial in common. We had lunch on the side of the road in a little patch free of brambles and stinging nettles with a view to the far distance and our destination.
For once we rode straight to the promised camp site and it was actually there, had some chit-chat to a very friendly Canadian lady from Quebec who was touring on her own and then we admired the local fauna and fed the sparrows our left over spaghetti.
Didn’t see any of the opening nor first game of the world cup soccer in South Africa but at least Angelique and Nick kept us up to date on the score.