Ardennes ride.

[caratz]

It just looks like one can't get enough of the Ardennes. There are always new places to discover, and old ones to rediscover.
Today, the Grigione gang's ride went from Antwerp to Büllingen in the Belgian Eifel. That was about two hours' riding from Antwerp. The weather was fantastic, 25°C.

We'd left at 10.00 and got there around 12.15, sat down to our usual entrecote and fries. We left around 13.45 for the city of Durbuy. This is a route that Rudy and I had studied in depth, because we lead a group of about 45 bikes on it last year. We had our GPS's working but I hardly had need to have the indications of mine. The route came back to me like a well learned lesson.

Said route is made of all kinds of turns, ranging from sweepers to hairpins, and wider 180° ers. It's great to do at speeds around 80 to 100 KMH. Stressless, and sweet. Said routes takes you from the region of the Hautes Fagnes to the Ourthe and Lesse river valleys. Once we hit this area, temperatures rose to 31° C. Even with the Venting Machine on, it felt hot.

We got to Durbuy, but decided to skip town and had onwards to Marche en Famenne. We losst Rudy on the way, but I managed to find him via mobile, he'd gone past us, we don't know how. After a short palaver, we decided to cut the trip short, and get home around 18.30 to prepare a BBQ.

Arriving in Marche en Famenne, we got to a place where there had just been a motorcycle crash. Two people on the ground, one badly trashed Yam. We still can't understand what happened. it was in town, lot of traffic around, and just behind traffic lights. It gave us shivers, and got us very subdued on the radio. All of us hate to see that. We'd asked if we could be of any use, but were told the ambulance had been called and the police was underway.

The ride back to Antwerp took us about 2 hours, with enormous traffick jams around Brussels. The day ended with a fantastic BBQ and a dip in a swimming pool and whirlpool. Almost perfect....