Cycling in Belgium is so easy. The North Sea cycle route (which covers 6000 kms by the way) is so well sign-posted. It makes the cycling so much easier.

We left our cheap and cheerful apartment and continued to cycle East. Thefirst 16 kms were cycling on a promenade along the waterfront.

It’s fun being in a new country. We are not sure which language we should be speaking, but everyone we have met speaks fluent English. They actually seem to like talking to us, whereas the French seem to find tourists such a chore. It is such a refreshing change.

We stopped at an Aldi and Mike got himself an energy drink and I picked up a couple of cokes. At least I thought they were cokes and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

What I thought was coke is actually beer

We did a gentle 59 kms today. We are due a rest day, but the cycling is so easy that we are resting on our cycling days.
We have managed to find ourselves in the most expensive city in Belgium, and we’re not in Bruges. It’s a town called Knokke and it’s pretty much on the border of Holland. We checked out a few hotels and they are all really expensive. We are becoming a bit soft and enjoying the comforts of the hotels. We had better toughen up a bit before we do our around the world cycle ride.

The food here is about 3 times more expensive than France. We were not very happy about this as the menu appears to be exactly the same. Oh well, we’ll be in Holland tomorrow.

Arrived in Belgium

Leftover junk from the war

We’ve left France and are now in Belgium. There was such a noticable difference as we crossed the border. There were signs. Many of them. Signs that marked the north sea cycle route we have decided to follow for a bit. It was such a refreshing change as the French don’t signpost anything.

The roads were also very flat and mostly traffic free or where there was a lot of traffic they would give us our very own cycle lane. Really nice of them.

We tootled through fields, windmills and a bit of the coast. We were both feeling pretty drained. The last few days cycling have been pretty full on for us. We just took it easy and stopped after only 50km at a beach resort style place called Westende.

We found an apartment for considerably less than any hotel in France and it had cooking facilities which was fantastic. We browsed around the supermarket and deli’s. The food here is completely different to France as well. Everything seems to be smothered in a creamy sauce.  I still can’t understand why Europeans are so skinny. Mike reckons it’s because they smoke.

We picked up a selection of Belgium beer’s to try. I love Belgium beer’s as they have so much flavour, but you need to be careful of the high alcohol content

Selection of Belgium Beers and snacks

It was a lazy start to the day being Sunday and all. The quirky hotel we stayed at included breakfast which was super dooper cool.

It was lucky we dosed up on as much breakfast as we could eat and as much coffee as we could drink as it was a really hilly start to the ride.

Most of the riding today was on main roads so not as nice as other days. On a couple of occasions we were cycling on the main roads wondering why cars kept tooting at us. It was getting really annoying. Then all of a sudden a cycle lane would sprout up out of the middle of nowhere. We wouldn’t have seen the cycle lane if it wasn’t for a random guy on a bike on it. This is another of the annoying things about France. They do not signpost anything!

It was Sunday and things shut down in France on Sundays. This gave a kind of ghost town feel when cycling through towns. We stumbled upon a junk market (car boot or garage sale). We picked up some incense as this is a cheap (but smelly) way of keeping mosquitos away when camping.

The highlight of the day was finding a Decathlon store that was OPEN. Yes – you heard me. It was Sunday and a store was OPEN and it just happened to be our FAVOURITE store in the whole wide world (ask Tracy – she knows about Decathlon).

Decathlon stores have everything you could ever need. Cycle stuff, camping stuff, watersports stuff, golf stuff, in fact stuff to do with any sort of sports and it is soooo ridiculously cheap. I just wanted to buy everything – but alas – there was no room left on Mikes bike for him to carry it.

Anyway – we bought a couple of essential items. Mike needed a new rear tyre and I needed a mirror.

We also cycle past the channel tunnel. I hate tunnels but I’ve been through this one 4 times.

We then headed into Dunkirk and found a chain hotel for the night (nowhere near as cool as our quirky hotel last night and 15 euros more expensive).

Looking back at the town we just left

The channel tunnel

Some place (Hotel de Ville I think) with giant lolly scuptures outside

Today was forecast to rain, so we set the alarm for 7am to ensure we were away before it started. We hate packing up a wet tent.

We are really getting into the groove of cycling now. The first week was pretty hard, but we are getting fitter and really enjoying this second week. I’m even enjoying the hills a bit.

We stopped in a town called Bolougne sur Mer for lunch and to visit the tourist office. This is probably the ugliest town I have been to in France. It’s quite modern in a 70s fashion with ugly residential blocks.

However we did find out that Le Tour de France would not be crossing our path. We have been seeing signs that the roads would be closing all the way up the coast. So if you are watching the Tour de France on the 3rd July and the 4th July – you will see where we have just cycled through 🙂

We stopped after 73 kms at a nice town called Wissant – about 20 kms short of Calais. We were pretty tired and didn’t feel like camping. The hotels here seemed to be really expensive. There was a 1 star hotel for 120 euros! We didn’t stay there. We found a quirky little hotel for half the price and that included breakfast.

Our quirky little hotel had a restaurant downstairs so we decided to eat there, however they were full. It was a shame because it looked really nice.

We tried another restaurant. We went in and sat down, but it had a strange smell, the decor was dated and there was zero ambience, despite there being others eating there.

We got up to leave but the lady stopped us and asked why we were leaving. I had noticed there was no pizza on the menu. I didn’t want pizza but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I said that we wanted pizza. “Ah – she said. We are a restaurant – we don’t do pizza” then carried on to tell us where we could find pizza.

Anyway,we ended up at a pizza restaurant at the beach that was buzzing with people. We had a nice night and nice pizza!

We had a little bit of trouble finding our way out of Le Treport. The Garmin kept trying to send us up one way streets and steep hills. We gave up on the Garmin and just decided to follow the main road.

We had to ride up a steep hill to get out of town. At the top of the steep hill we realised we had cycled up the wrong hill. So we cycled down the steep hill and cycled up another steep hill (the correct one this time). Did I mention the hills were steep?

Some funny looking houses we saw leaving Le Treport.

Funny looking houses

We rode through the Somme region where a lot of soldiers lost their lives in the first world war. I still remember Sebastian Fawke’s graphic description of battle of the Somme in his book “Birdsong”, and this gave me an eerie feeling when cycling through this region. It’s strange that when you visit a historic place it makes it real, whereas before it was just a novel I had read.

Cycling through the Somme

The rest of the day’s ride was fantastic. It was sunny, the roads were flat, and we had a tail wind. To top it off, a few of
cycle paths were traffic free. Perfect!

Mike got his first flat tyre today.

Mike fixing a flat tyre

After 70 kms we decided to find a campground for the night. We stopped at a seaside town which had a lot of campgrounds. I noticed a few dodgy looking characters in the town. We navigated to the first campsite and it was a dive. As well as that,they lock you in from 10pm until 8am with big wooden gates. We decided this town was a bit creepy so we headed on tothe next campsite 17 kms away.

We were lucky we had a tail wind and the roads were flat and we motored along and finally found a campground in a nicepart of town with a LIDL supermarket next door (22c beer).

Phew, what a day. It was a bit of an effort to get moving after a days break. We didn’t leave the hotel until about 11am and it was hot. It was our first really hot day and involved a lot of hills. Why is it the really hot days happen just after I have washed all the sweat from my clothes? I dunno, but I recall this happening on our last cycle trip as well!

We did a lot of pushing up hills today and sweated buckets. I was secretly enjoying the heat, but Mike not so much. He overheated on a big uphill and started to struggle. He usually has heaps more energy than me. I was really concerned as there was no shade to stop and rest. When we finally made it to the top there was a restaurant and Mike pretty much collapsed in a chair in the shade. I grabbed us a couple of cokes and a pain au chocolat, and he felt much better after that. Phew.

As we cycled into the next town, the temperature dropped and there were flashes of forked lightning all around us. We could tell it was going to chuck it down any minute.

All the hotels were on the waterfront but they looked really grotty. We had a look at one hotel but I didn’t really fancy it. It was pretty cheap and nasty. We cycled about 1 km to another one as it was starting to rain. When we arrived it chucked it down. We decided to take the room anyway. It was pretty nice with a view.

We wandered into town around 7pm for an early dinner. We picked a restaurant based on how full it was and it turned out to be the cheapest as well. We are both a bit sick of seafood, having had it for the last 10 days, so we both went for a meat option (ok – I had prawns as a starter).

We only cycled 35 kms today but we are both pretty knackered.

Nice cycle ride beside some windmills

helicopter dropping a man in to the windmills (yep, there was a man in the cage)

Big cliffs we had to cycle over

Funny looking house

No cycling today. We spent the day lazing around Dieppe. We considered catching the ferry back to England from here but have decided to continue cycling up the coast. We might make it to Amsterdam yet!

Having coffee in Dieppe

Not such a good day today. It started with rain in the night. As we were packing up the wet tent, a guy started cutting the hedges in our campsite while we were still there. This pissed me off. Why couldn’t he do the vacant camp sites first? I’m not sure why he was so stupid but Mike reckons it’s because it’s a small village and there is too much inbreeding here.

I politely asked him to chop hedges elsewhere as it was noisy (communicated by putting my fingers in my ears). He seemed happy with this.

We crossed the Seine on the ferry. This was a far nicer way to cross than cycling over that steep bridge.

Crossing the Seine by ferry.

We decided on a short ride today as it was threatening to rain, and we needed a hotel to recharge all our stuff. We navigated to a town that had a few hotels in it. It was a reasonably easy ride of about 26 kms to the town, but all the hotels were at the top of a very steep and nasty hill.

We persevered and pushed our bikes up 1.5 kms to the nearest one which was an Ibis. “Sorry we are full”. bugger. So we went around the corner to the next hotel. “Sorry we are full”. double bugger. We pushed our bikes up that ridiculously steep hill for nothing!

The next town was 20kms away so we navigated to that. The hotel was closed. bugger! The next town was only 7 kms away and it also had a tourist office. Feeling positive we cycled to the next town.

Thankfully the tourist office was still open. The girl in the tourist office phoned the hotel for us to make a booking. The hotel was full. So she phoned a few more hotels on our route. All of them also full. We have had this problem before in France when heading inland.

It was after 5pm at this stage and we were getting a bit pissed off. I saw a train station as we arrived into town. I asked the girl where the train goes. “Dieppe, it takes 20 minutes”. Decision made, we would catch the train to Dieppe. Back on the coast there were be hotels.

The trains here aren’t very cycle tourist friendly and we had to push our heavily loaded bikes up steps to get them on the train. Luckily the guards helped us with this. 20 minutes later we were in Dieppe and found ourselves a hotel on the waterfront. phew. what a day!

Our route cycled so far:

We were glad the rain stayed away overnight and were able to pack up a dry tent and leave Honfleur. We decided to stick with the advice of the random French guy from Bayeux and follow the Seine towards Paris.

Our garmin tried to send us on some crazy routes today. Here is Mike asking for directions.

mike asking for directions

We saw a snake slither across the road but I was a bit late getting my camera out and only caught him as he slid into a hole.

snake crawling into his hole

We followed the thatched cottage route, which involved a lot of steep hills and a lot of thatched houses.

It was a scenic ride. We needed to get to the other side of the Seine for accommodation and Mike wanted to send us over this very steep bridge. I wasn’t so keen, so we decided to cycle further to the ferry crossing.

Steep bridge I didn’t want to cycle over

It was threatening to rain all day so we tried to find a hotel but there was none to be found. Luckily at about 6pm we found a nice campsite on the side of the road and it only cost 9.50 euro to camp.

The town had a little supermarket, so for dinner we had baguette and camembert for starters, steak hache with poivre sauce and rice for main, and chocolat for desert and a bottle of vin rouge. The cost? just 6 euros for the two of us. Not bad for a camp meal 🙂

Our route so far: