Distance: 72 km
Elevation: 722 m
Duration: 4:52 h
Weather: nice and sunny, but the temperatures are getting more autumn-like, 18 C
While until now I have been following my original plan (more or less), from today and until next weekend I am “free” to make new plans. And being in Belgium in the week of the UCI world championships, Belgium the country most crazy about cycling (see the spectators waiting on the road side hours before a minor race, I came across 2 days ago…), well what better to do than to visit some of these iconic places of Flanders cycling: The Muur!
Admittedly I didn’t ride it all up, but actually there was probably only a short part that would really have been impossible for me to ride up (the same part that I also felt was impossible to ride DOWN!) and I think that I was able to ride it up quite far. More than I would have thought.
Before the Muur, I had already been up on the Bosberg, but I came from a different direction than the famous cobbled climb, which was still a challenging climb, but without cobbles… but I did get the cobbles for the descent. That’s not much better either!
Talking about road conditions in Belgium this is probably a good place to rant a bit. There are essentially 3 types of cyclable roads in Belgium:
1) Well planned cycling roads e.g. along canals or on old railway tracks.
2) “Bicycle paths” from hell. These are official bicycle paths that varyingly have:
- No space to the cars, but a white line that seems to make drivers think that it is okay NOT to give you any space.
- Debris or challenging surfaces (see also below)
- Start or end in the middle of nowhere
- Take up all/most of the sidewalk not giving space to pedestrians
3) Small or medium sized roads that theoretically would be okay for cycling, if it weren’t for the challenging road surfaces, and I don’t mean the cobbles, which are challenging, but willingly so. No, I mean potholes and stripes “of death” in the middle of the road. (The examples below aren’t even the worst I came across, literally)
So really no wonder that Belgium excelled at cyclocross. It is a necessary skill to be able to ride on the roads!
In Flanders the cycling paths are also less well indicated, compared to the Belgian Ardennes and Wallonia (Or Elsass or Germany). But here the knooppunt system similar to the Netherlands is being used, but without maps printed and hung at important road junctions. And you never know, if your knooppunkt brings you over the death traps of bicycle paths, cobbles or a beautiful lane far away from the traffic.So specially on descents one needs to pay more attention to the road than I would normally do.
But well, besides the roads nice panoramas await:
Before I forget, also today there was time for a second breakfast and it so happened, that a palace with a rose garden was around the corner:
My accommodation for the night is also in a small castle, right outside of Geraardsbergen:
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