Advertisement
Published: August 31st 2006
Crap Bikes
Super Star Wal-Mart SpecialsWell as you may or may not remember we were heading on a bike trip from the Belgium coast to France and down the Seine into Paris. But alas as the title of this entry implies this endeavor was not as successful as we had hoped…
We began our (brief) journey at the Leuven train station where we first realized that things might not go as smoothly as we had hoped. We purchased tickets for our bikes and ourselves to take to train to Oostende on the Belgium coast where we would begin our ride. We were led to believe that boarding the train with our bikes would be a simple task - perhaps for others it is but nothing is simple in the realm of Carrie and Kyle. After one missed train (due to the fact that we had no idea how to get our bikes aboard), one rude conductor, and one very quick job of unpacking our bikes to get them on the train we were on our way.
We biked 25Km that day. This leg of our journey included highlights such as busy boardwalks, backtracking, and dirty bathrooms but we finally ended up at a lovely
Train Station
Oostende Train Station little campground in Westende called Evergreen Campground. But alas our respite only lasted so long and we had to haul our sore asses back on our bikes the next morning.
On day two we biked through some very cute seaside towns where we debated staying despite the fact that we had only traveled a few kilometers. But we persevered and were ‘rewarded’ by the sight of the French border although it was all downhill from there. Once in France the riding went from well-marked bike paths to a narrow shoulder of a busy highway, the view went from seaside to industrial, and the campground from cute to crude. By the end of the 30 some odd miles that we biked that day our spirits were low. Our attitudes were not helped by the fact that the campground we were staying was a sand dune beside the sea that turned out to be miles away from any food source and we had not eaten all day. We literally spent hours trying to find an open store. To top off the day the winds were upwards of 35-40 miles/hour so our tent was hitting us in the head all night and
German Bunkers
German Bunkers sand was blowing all over everything. Fun.
Well by the next morning we decided enough was enough. The handlebars on Kyle’s bike kept falling down all of the time, my bike was making odd clicking noises and the bike routes along the French coast appeared nonexistent and the scenery was depressing so we turned around and headed back to Belgium. We camped once more at the Evergreen Campground and decided to stay there a couple of days. We hung out at the seashore and relaxed in our shaded campsite - a nice respite from the 30+ degrees weather. Then we headed once again for Oostende where our crappy bikes gave us one more kick in the pants when my breaks decided to stop working as I was trying to avoid hitting an old lady and her little dog.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.08s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0525s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
