The recap of yesterday’s rest day is short: Slept in, breakfast, more sleep, bike maintenance, shopping, lunch, more sleep, yoga and reading, dinner. They pass so quickly!
Staying at the fort was really cool, also literally: The meters of brick wall around us and the meters of soil above us (for natural vegetation camouflage) kept the room naturally cool and quiet, which was excellent for sleeping (I also successfully hunted down the two mosquitoes in the room before going to sleep which helped, too).
I was worried before we started the trip that all the cycling would get boring at some point, but that has not been the case so far. I get excited every morning about what we might discover during the ride.
Up to now, we did an average of 80km per cycling day, which can be driven by car in an hour – so the three weeks we cycled so far could be compressed into just two long days in a car. On the other hand, it would have taken at least 6 weeks (at 40km a day) of walking to cover the same ground. I really like the speed of cycling: We move slowly enough to take in flora and fauna, but are fast enough to see the scenery change quite a bit within days.
Today was not the best flora and fauna day though. Large parts were in urban areas or on broader roads. We can’t complain about the broader roads though, because we mainly took them to shorten today’s distance from 119km to 105km. The bike paths sometimes squiggle quite a bit.
Sadly, we left cycling heaven today. I think I was biased by the Swiss-Dutch couple’s comments the other day and thought that Belgium was indeed not as nice as the Netherlands. But it was still ok, most roads we were on had some kind of cycling path (but not as smooth as in the Netherlands; I wonder what % of Dutch GDP goes into roads and cycle paths, boy are they nice).
We had very good legs today and averaged a fast 22.4km/h moving speed over the 106km to Lier. So after just 3.5h on the bike, we reached Westmalle and cycled past the abbey where the world-famous dubbel and trippel are brewed. Of course, we stopped and had two beers and a dozen Bitterballen (thanks for the tip, Clare!), which are basically deep-fried gravy. They are better than it sounds.
With a good buzz going (the dubbel/trippel have 7% and 9.5%, respectively), the last 25km to Lier just flew by. Near Lier, we cycled along a broad canal which looked inviting for a post-ride swim. I hope we can end most days this way going forward.
Total distance/elevation to date: 1676km/10’601m
Day 21 Route and Stats
The 1948 Tour 
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