August 12, 2021
In Antwerp: the Nete Canal
The day got off to an anxious start when I checked our email and saw one from the Belgian government I had missed yesterday. Not yet being fully fluent in Dutch, I copied the text into Google Translate and held my breath while I waited for the results.
Our hotel assigns clients to specific time slots for breakfast, presumably to reduce crowding and infection risk. Having requested an early slot, we arrived at 7:15 to an almost early dining hall and an opulent spread: eggs, bacon, grilled peppers, rosti, waffles, eight varieties of cereal, and on and on. The best hotel breakfast we’ve seen in months. More good news to start the day, especially since we’ll be here three more mornings.
The news isn’t quite as good when we leave our room at 10, retrieved our newly reassembled bikes from the storage room, and take a better look at them in the light of day. Annoying and embarrassing, but it at least merits a good laugh.
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3 years ago
When I reassembled the bikes yesterday, my front brake was badly out of adjustment and rubbing against the rim. After fruitlessly trying to readjust it myself I decided to just swing by a bike shop to see if we could have it done properly; so we began this morning’s ride with a detour to the nearest one, roughly a mile away. Unfortunately when we arrive we find it closed, with a sign in the window that they’re out until Friday.
So we browse the net and set off for the next nearest one, nearly another mile further on. We have a terrible time trying to navigate to it though and after probably a dozen iterations of biking a block or two before stopping to review the map, curse a bit and start up again, we finally give up when we find ourselves back just a few blocks from our hotel again. The bike store is due to close for lunch in a few minutes, and we’d obviously never make it there in time after wasting so much of it already.
So we stop by the side of the road, I get out the wrenches, and I try again to adjust the brakes myself. Success!
So after all this, we don’t really start biking until nearly noon. Finally thought we’re underway. The ride begins by following the train line south out of town on bike route F1, a prominent line carrying significant bike traffic. We follow it southeast to the village of Duffel, where we stop at a picnic bench near the train station to eat lunch. We stopped here because it’s time to eat even though we’ve only covered about ten miles of our ride; and because the first outhouse Rachael has seen is right nearby; and because there’s also a WC sign on the side of the train station as an alternate possibility.
The WC sign on the side of the train station leads to nowhere. There’s no restroom there after all, as the station agent informs Rachael. And the outhouse is locked, perhaps for Covid. So we’ve averted a possible food crisis, but now we’re in the midst of a bathroom crisis instead. We quickly bike into the village of Duffel and stop at the first bar/cafe we come to, placing an order so that we can buy rights to use the bathroom. Sitting at an outdoor table in the pleasant midday sun I continue my quest to sample a variety of Belgian abbey beers while Rachael orders a dish of ice cream that comes with a pitcher containing nearly as much chocolate as the ice cream itself.
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Cheers,
Keith
3 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_goose
3 years ago
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Bathroom crisis successfully brought to closure, we’re finally rolling again. By now it’s about 1:30, we’ve only gone about ten miles and still have 30 to go. The next 10 or 15 are a brilliant ride as we follow either the Nete Canal or the Kleine Nete River that roughly parallels it. Delightful cycling, with anywhere from two or four paths to choose from depending on what’s happening with the waterways. Paved bike paths line both sides of the canal, and at times one or both sides of the river as well. Many bikers are about of all ages, shapes and speeds. Older couples and groups bike along at a leisurely pace, often on e-assists; and groups of club riders whiz by in a fast moving pack. Fishermen line the banks, boaters are on the water. Here and there, queues of canal boats line the bank.
Finally we leave the canal and bend north and then back west toward Antwerp again. It’s getting late in the day and dinner is calling loudly in the far distance, so we don’t stop much - but it’s lovely farmland, full of livestock and all manner of crops. The bike route itself is fantastic as we alternate between very short stretches on normal roads with a bike lanes; single lane roads shared by cars and bikes (marked on the pavement by a symbol of a bicycle superimposed over an automobile); normal bike paths; and paved filaments that seem barely two feet wide if that.
Video sound track: Wonderland, by Spencer Brewer
Finally we’re back in the outskirts of the city; and after another four miles on a brick-surfaced bike/pedestrian lane on the side of arterial streets, we make it back to the hotel not long before five.
We quickly shower and rush out the door to head to the center for dinner. It takes us a while to settle on a restaurant, but hunger and the first few drops of a brief shower help us come to a decision.
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Ride stats today: 41 miles, 500’
Today's ride: 41 miles (66 km)
Total: 41 miles (66 km)
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