Belgium & Luxembourg

Getting up today it was finally sunny! We planned to get to Vianden Luxembourg in 318 KM. We are meeting our Malaysian friend Faizal there. He has just come from our friends Bart and Renate home in Holland. We had all originally met in Ushuaia in 2014. We wanted to see some more of Belgium as well. So we went the long way round for 421 KM.

We rode to the coast, where we did not expect to see huge white sand beaches.

Our next destination was the town of Veurne. This is a Flemish town near the border of France that was not occupied by the Germans in WWI and was thus spared the bombing that the rest of Belgium suffered. There is an impressive market square and town hall here.

 

We stopped near Ypres to pay our respects at the Canadian HILL 62 memorial for the men lost in WW 1. We also stopped at the nearby Hill 60, which was very strategic and won and lost several times in the war with heavy casualties.

From here riding east we were briefly in France before going to Tournai Belgium. The famed church (said to be one of the most beautiful religious buildings in the world and of course a UNESCO site) is undergoing a massive 20-year renovation that started in 2006. It is a “five towered Romanesque and early Gothic masterpiece” built in the 12 and 13 th centuries. It was still impressive as was the market square. The guild flags here show the towns historic importance in trade.

Lunch Belgian style.

From here we had 270 km to go at it was already 3 pm. We booked it on the highway until we hit Luxembourg and went back to the small roads

We were coming to a round about and just ahead of us was the Malaysian Adventurer himself.

We all then rode the last 60 km to Vianden on the narrow windy roads of hilly Luxembourg. The town is nestled in the hills with the Castle perched above it. We set up our camp and walked the km into town for some beers.