Advertisement
Published: June 25th 2011
KS in front of our green door #8
The door to our flat! And we are off for the day!Our first full biking day - we were pretty excited, but didn't get all our stuff together and ready to head out the door until 10:30am! Is so great to sleep in and not be on a schedule! We picked Lier to bike to - both for the distance (about 15 miles) and for the town's description. Our guide book Lier as a pretty little town, south-east of Antwerp that has a handsome collection of historic buildings and a 14th century watch tower.
We found our way on our routed bike routes (04-08-10-80-81-61-63-11 to 89). We were delighted to find that the "hole in the wall" that leads us under the railroad drops us quickly out to bike route 04 and we were off!
The first town we biked through was Mortsel - about 25,000 people live there. Our history books tell us that Mortsel was the victim of one of the major tragedies and errors of World War II. On April 5, 1943, the bombing of the Minerva car factory, then used to repair Luftwaffe planes, was the target of a big bombing raid by the Allies, but the target was missed and a residential area hit instead.
Bike routes
Once we got under the railroad (through the hole in the wall) and over the highway - we finally found these delightful bike routes! From there we biked to the town of Hove, a small town is a population only 8,500 it is said to be one of the most expensive and safest areas in Belgium.
It took us only about two hours to get to Lier - it had started to sprinkle a bit, when we got to town we found a green space along the Nete river, a river formed in Lier, at the confluence of the rivers Grote Nete and Kleine Nete. We enjoyed our picnic lunch (fresh hard rolls with cheese and coldcuts), we felt quite European! :-) We found a statue of Tony Bergmann in the park - and was curious why his statue included small children looking up at him.
"Tony" was the pseudonym of Anton Bergmann, a Lier attorney who loved literature, his primary writing was Ernest Staas, which was a successful book, I still don't know why his statue has children with him, perhaps his own.
Lier had a bigger downtown than we had expected, it has a population of about 34,000. It is known for its beers 'Caves', 'St. Gummarus' and the pastry 'Lierse vlaaikes'. It is also home to Van
Hool, one of the largest manufacturers of buses and coaches. We found it to be under construction in a big way! The interesting part that the harmony of pedestrians and workers and heavy equipment - you could walk just about anywhere, and the workers would wave you along and stop and wait for you.
We never did find the clock tower, and the cathedral, St. Gummarus Church was significantly under construction - no candle lighting today. It was now about 2:30pm so we thought best head back to Antwerp. We were so proud of how we had found our way and what a great bike ride we had had.
THEN the rain came -it had just started to rain on our return, and we thought we better put our rain gear on BEFORE it started raining more. I think we made by a mere minutes. We were quickly riding in the wind and the rain. Jean said once, "I know I was on my bike, and my legs were moving the pedals, but I didn't feel like I was moving!" I had elected to bring my rain pants, but a wind jacket, Jean had a rain coat but
wind pants. So we were both miserable!
With our heads down we ended up missing a critical turn, like anyone could SEE anything? Then we take the bike map out - that is now losing numbers because it is soaked - and we ended up to the East and we wanted to go North-west! The rain let up from time to time, we found our way - downed an energy bar and were back on the road. Just when the rain would stop - we would begin to dry out a little (all except our shoes!), another downpour would hit us. We waited under an over pass at one point, to catch our breaths and hope that the heavy rain would pass.
We finally got back to our flat at 6:45pm, drenched to the bone with thoughts of hot showers, hot chocolate and then realizing we had little to eat for dinner. I hit the shower, and Jean trudged tot he grocery store for rations (such a good big sister!) We had crackers, cheese, bread and soup - Jean hit the shower while "prepared" dinner - then we crashed! (Notice that wine warmed us in lieu of hot
chocolate :-)
Despite the rain and cold and wet - we had a great great day! When it all said and done, and we biked around in circles, out of the way and out and back to find our way - we biked 40 miles - a good start for day 1 of biking we thought - there should be a correction factor that adds miles for wind and rain :-)
Tomorrow we will check the weather report before heading out!
Kahtleen and Jean Biking in Belgium 2011
Advertisement
Tot: 0.13s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0922s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
