Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Today we saddled our ‘horses’ again and did a nice, long circuit by bicycle. We had set out the route last night, a little bit by instinct as we don’t know the area very well but it worked out tremendously. The first bit was a little bit busy but then we hit the country roads through the fields and the villages before a very long uphill followed by a similar downhill to the Meuse at a stone throw away from Dinant.
Even though we had explored Dinant extensively with Rita and Theo a few days ago I still wanted to have another look at the road passage at the other side of town. I still remember vividly how the bus on a school trip had only a few centimeters on either side when passing through there, strange how something so insignificant sticks.
After that we followed the excellent cycle path back to Namur, excellent in most places except where there are cobblestones and then also roadworks in quite a few places, one of these causing a puncture in Ellie’s front tyre. Here’s me fixing it.
A little further down we saw some rock climbers doing their thing on some slabs along the river. Pity it was on the other side, I would have liked to have a closer look.
There are many sluices in this river and regular ships carrying cargo although the main traffic now seems to be holiday craft and houseboats.
It was easy cycling along the river, in Namur we had a little trouble finding the path along the Sambre but after that it was plain sailing and we got back at 3pm already after 85 km of terrific cycling. We both agreed that the Meuse at this point is more scenic than the Loire valley, we had actually imagined the Loire valley to be like this.