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Published: April 7th 2018
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Alyse - our tour guide
Best bikes so far - awesome tour Cycling weather the past two days has meant we been busy on the bike paths! On Friday morning we took a great bike tour in Brugge. We thought we were going to be way early for the tour, but by the time I had expertly navigated us into ground zero for road construction not once, but twice, finally convinced Dave to park at the train station and walk the 2 miles into the center of time - we ended up being only 15 minutes early. We had a young history major for a tour guide, a native of the city, and had just a wonderful time with her and on the tour - and Brugge is a fantastic city especially in the non peak tourist season. We ate lunch at a family owned brewery in the city, and bought some more of their Zot beer. And then, we discovered we couldn't exactly remember where we had parked the car. We knew it was a train station, but which one? We looked at the main station once we walked there, and it was not the same building .... Consulting our google maps history didn't clear it up, and so we started looking
Original windmill
Only one remaining in Brugge - the whole building turns to meet the wind. for the city gate we had used to get into the city so we could retrace our steps .... Some 2 miles later, we found the right train station .... It was the back side of the first train station we had started at. Who knew they had a totally different looking entrance on the other side? Dave was uncomplaining though - carrying his beer - I thought it was kind of funny.
Then we were off to a little town called Damme, not far away, to see if we could rent some bikes and do some cycling. And we were able to cycle for about 2 hours along the canal before they closed. Pretty strong crosswind, but we were in no danger of getting blown over, because the bikes were some kind of heavy. The most interesting thing we saw was a shepherd, 4 sheep dogs, and a flock of about 70 sheep grazing along the bike path. The whole thing worked pretty well, those dogs kept the sheep all herded up, and the sheep were busy grazing ... But interesting to watch the flock move along the bike path.
Today we decided
Lunch
Hungry and windblown after the tour .. spaghetti for me, Flemish beef stew for Dave ... yummy to spend the whole day cycling in and around Kortrijk. It's a town not far from where we are staying, that has a good tourist information center, bikes for rent, and then bike path trail starts right there - everything we needed. The bike trail system here is amazing - it runs everywhere, all over the country, with easy to follow sign posts. And those are just the scenic paths, there are bike lanes on every road, so you can really go anywhere at all on your bike. So today, we cycled in the historic town, along the canals, and out in the countryside. We didn't have a set pal where we were going, just kind of followed the signs, and we found our way back to the tourist center before they closed. The interesting things we saw today were:a run away horse on the bike path - the horse threw it's rider off, and then took off down the bike path toward the barn as far as we could tell ... Happened right as we were coming up to them. The second interesting thing we saw was a bike park - all concrete - where the bike riders did
Kortrijk
The towers to control traffic on the canal. It is as pretty as it looks all sorts of jumps and stunts. We probably watched them for nearly an hour ... it was amazing, and sometimes almost death defying.
Dave took lots of pictures that we hope you enjoy. Tomorrow is Paris-Roubaix ... And the weather forecast no longer calls for cold and rain .... Will now be warm and sunny - yeah for the spectators! Here's hoping for a Matt Hayman (not probable but a sentimental favorite), Phillipe Gilbert (Dave's choice) or Peter Sagan (possible) win tomorrow.
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Bill Hagan
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R.I.P. Michael Goolaerts
So sorry to hear of this during the Paris-Roubaix race. So young. What a loss. Bill