Day 11 - Off we go to Leuven - Planned Spontaneity

July 9, 2018

Day 11 - Off we go to Leuven

The vagaries of depending on Google maps

Marvin: So the knooppunten system of bicycle map nodes had been serving us well as Erika planned out our cycle routes for each day. However, we had not been able to obtain any of these maps for the part of Belgium we were now in. So we turned to Google maps and said OK Google, we are on bicycles and we want to go to our hotel at this address ...

And Google of course replies, in essence, hey no problem I know all about bicycle routes, I can tell you exactly where to go, turn by turn. And Google does exactly that. HOWEVER, google doesn't say "By the way, are you interested in scenic routes like the ones developed by the knooppunten system or other regional trails?" Instead it assumes you simply want the most direct way available so long as the way is relatively safe for bicycles. I guess that would be good for commuters who are in a hurry. Also, "relatively safe" includes anything that has a bicycle lane, even though occasionally the bicycle lane is right on the shoulder of a busy highway. Another idiosyncrasy of Google maps is that even though you are in bicycle mode, it announces everything several hundred yards in advance and then instructs you to turn maybe 20 yards in advance like it would for a car, resulting in sometimes confusing instructions like 'turn left' when you are still following the road curving right and the left turn is only just about to come into view. Anyway it takes some getting used to and you need to be able to see the map, not just listen to instructions.

So you will see in the map that we spent the first 10 km just getting out of the city centre to be dumped on a highway that just went straight for miles. At last some semi rural areas with pretty, neat homes appeared and then we turned on to the highway headed for Leuven with the bike path being mostly just glorified shoulder (at least they keep it clean even though it was a little rough at times).

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A note on the maps: If you want to see more of what we are seeing, go to the top right corner, click on the drop down arrow where it says 'RWGPS' and change the map to 'Satellite'. Then zoom in. You can also change the map to 'OSM cycle' and then you will see all the great routes we could have taken.

Around km 27.6 Erika said she thought she saw something about a Benedictine Monastery a ways back, so we turned around to see what it was. I was quite willing to try it, hoping that maybe Google maps would then change it's mind about how to get us into town and take us on some back roads. The monastery had been replaced by an organic vegetable farming operation but I was right about Google and it told us to keep going the way we now were going even though it was gravel road. In less than a km we were back on pavement in rural village areas and we proceeded into town on the other side of the tracks, on a major bike route with beautiful farmland around us. This is where I finally started taking pictures again.

This is the only picture I took on that long straight highway going north. The bike path was very good, being well separated from the highway, but there was little other than industry, business sections and the armed services airport next to us.

Then we turned the corner to head east toward Leuven and ugh!

Too many big trucks going by, even though they are quite used to avoiding cyclists, these cyclists are not used to putting up with them. Every now and then for a short stretch the extra shoulder would disappear and we would only have the bike path to protect us

One happy farm cat, lying in the shade, looked to be asleep until I approached to get a picture. We talked to the farmer for a bit, he thought we could keep going south on the gravel road and Google actually told us to, so we did!

Oh happy day, we got off that awful highway for this kind of stuff

Now we are on well separated bike path even when we are passing through industrial outskirts of the city

And there are still some gorgeous vistas

When we finally were directed into the city, we were still following a major bike route called F2 or something, painted on the pavement with signs and arrows. It was great to be back to that kind of tour cycling.

Today's ride: 37 km (23 miles)
Total: 514 km (319 miles)

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