August 16, 2023
Luxembourg (LU) to Aalst (BE)
Our hostel included breakfast, so we had a pretty relaxed morning and made it out the door with more than an hour before our train and only 2km to ride. It was a rough 2km though with a steep cobbled climb up to the city (I already had some premonition of this when we were descending in the elevator). We still had plenty of time once we reached the station so Tobias and I watched the street cleaner for half an hour.
The train was identical to the one we took from here last year and had plenty of space for our loaded bikes and the trailer. I spent weeks puzzling over this train leg of our journey. There were more direct ways to go, but the TER trains in France aren't very regular and we would have had to make loads of transitions. We could have gone through Paris, but that would have been even busier. I'm pretty pleased that we managed it in just 3 trains, and allowing 2 days made it a bit more peaceful.
I kind of miss train rides being a chance to sit and snack and read a book. They are definitely not very relaxing anymore while we try and keep a 2 year old contained. He might seem content, but behind the scenes is pretty tiring for us.
Tobias was well and truly tired by the time we reached Brussels just after 2. Another passenger with a bike helped us to unload the stuff at Brussels Noord and the lifts had enough room to move so we could get out quickly and on the road to get him to sleep.
Lander designed a great route to get us to Aalst. We climbed a bit to get out of Brussels but spent most of our ride on sealed or hard packed gravel cycle paths. Once we escaped the traffic it was a great ride through farmland, mostly following railway lines.
Lander came to meet us a few kilometres from his (soon to be) parent laws farm and rode the last bit with us. Lander is the first cycle tourist we ever met. We were hiking around mt Ruapehu in 2014 when we came across a Belgian guy in one of the huts. We ended up walking together for the next 5 days and he was almost the only other person we met. Then he set of to bike over to Taranaki which was unfathomable to us. We were at this point riding plenty on the track and the road, but riding between two places where you normally drive seemed outrageous. Somewhere he must have planted the seed in our heads though because 2 and a half years later we set off on our own adventure, and when we finally reached Europe he hosted us for almost 2 months in his flat in Aalst while we found jobs and a house on Utrecht. Without that accommodation we would have run out of money before we could find some way to earn it and probably ended up back in NZ far sooner than we hoped. He's been really important to how our life panned out so it's very cool to be here for his wedding this weekend. They are getting married at the farm so there is plenty to keep us busy helping out over the next few days. And they have 7 tractors and 3 forklifts so Tobias is more than happy.
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Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 2,961 km (1,839 miles)
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