By Farny and Clarky
Awoke slightly hazily from a good night at the Het Anker brewery and local bars in Mechelen. Headed down for a cracking breakfast ( good modern hotel ) but with some history (hotel Van der Val) used to be an old swimming pool (we think!) superb building, very nicely done !!
Set off on time from hotel … 9:30am and then south to Leuven along a canal side cycle path … keeping your wits about you as we zoomed along in a train like formation naroughly missing on coming cyclists, runners and walkers all out for their Saturday morning constitution.
Eventually got into Leuven where we headed for the centre ( aligned to Blighthy’s recommendation ) I took a flier as fell off bike in the main square much to Lee amusement !!! Van was already there in the centre and Miles had set up the ‘market stall’ for us to restock!! (Check out the photo, food of champions, Not) Timescales impacted as Clarky had another mechanical ! ( Chris is harping back to 2 years ago in France🙄)
Headed off and got a few hills en route …. Then travelled through Hoegarden !! Where Lee had a hurdy gurdy moment.
Lunch at Wasseiges … brilliantly prepared by Nick and Miles … Clarky had not corrected the issue with his bike cable and dropped off a bit with Tim. So we had our home made superb baguette with cheese, ham, tomatoes and then when they arrived decided to attempt open heart surgery on his bike which didn’t end too well as after 30mins we threw it in the back of the van and got the reserve bike out !! After a bit more fetling that was good to ride and we set off again to Huy at the foot of the notorious Mur de Huy a 1.3 mile climb with the steepest sections at 20%+.
Pretty lumpy end to the day as we got to Liege hotel (actually an IBIS at a retail park outside Liege, back to earth with a bump after Hotel Van Der Vol, all in time to catch the second half of the FA Cup final, then Straight across to the local Chinese ( the waiter was just like Manuel from Fawlty towers ) before trying to sort the blog out with Tim and trying to make this interesting 🤔
Finished the night back in the bar and watching Eurovision (Nick miraculously revealling his european flag bunting !!) brilliant !!
