Day 14, Sunday, Herselt, 15th May.
Sampling Belgian Beer on Bikes.
Francis was hanging around the caravan this morning. It is wet and the underwear I washed and hung out yesterday is even wetter that it was just washed. It was not bike riding weather, so to begin the day I cut myself a fringe again after growing my last one out for the past six months and Bob cleaned the bathroom. Living in a caravan is harder when its raining. Everything gets dirty as soon as its cleaned and if you don’t want to get soaking you are confined to a twelve foot by seven foot tin can. The rain continued to be intermittent for what seemed like forever. Fringe cut, bathroom clean and toast eaten, we set off anyway on the bikes. After about a mile, Bobs karma knee kicked in and we had to swap bikes. I can’t help but feel that I always get the soggy end of the cucumber, its not that I don’t love Mini (the bike) but she is hard to cycle on those small wheels, and Bob can now cycle even faster! The Belgians are great at cycle paths, you get right of way at roundabouts, your own traffic lights at junctions and they are better maintained than the roads. After about half an hour of jolly pedalling we end up right where we began! How? We set off again, I was keen to find the pace we passed through yesterday and also quite determined. We reached Herselt, and as rain loomed, we stopped off at a bar to sample some Belgian beer. Bob had a dark Leffe and I had a Palm, “a sweet one” as the barman had described it. So now we have sampled five of the about three hundred beers, quite good going I think.
Back on the road we realised we were on the right road to Westmearbeak, the place we wanted to reach. We pass the amazing dilapidated manor house with greenhouse attached, the caravan in the woods on the side of the road and then stopped off at a fishing/Sunday lunch bistro for another beer. All of the sights I had noticed yesterday had now been found. The beers this time we Le Chouff and Primus, Le Chouff being twice the price of Primus so think I know what will be the beer option in the future. Cycling around you see cabbages and strawberries growing everywhere, the houses are still lego like, but there are some nice buildings interspersed amongst the semi modern, semi plastic surroundings. Bob had decided that he wanted a bbq. So the search for bbq-able foods began. As soon as we realised it was past 6pm on a Sunday we knew that the bbq was going to have to wait for another day.
Back at the quiet campsite I make Bobs favourite, Lasagne, to make up for the lack of bbq, and after enjoying some wine and letting my aching legs rest, (I am sure we cycled 7-10 miles today, Bob thinks we cycled about 5) I brought in the still wet washing and hung it above the fire to avoid Bob being pant-less for another day.
Tomorrow we move on to Venlo, don’t know if we will make it, and I really don’t mind,
Goodnight, x.
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