Want to travel Europe on a budget? Want to have a trip of a lifetime but don’t know how to plan it? Belgium is a great country to explore by bicycle, even for beginner cyclists! If we can do this, you can do this!
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Do you want to travel Europe on a budget? Do you want to have a trip of a lifetime, but don’t know how to plan it? Belgium is a wonderful country to explore by bike, even if you’re a beginner cyclist or are new to bike packing. We were complete beginners when we set off to ride from Rome to London. We rode over 1,700 miles through 10 countries in 4 months. This is the biggest adventure we had ever attempted. This video is the Belgium portion of the trip, our eighth country. We spent 15 days in Belgium, about eight riding days. We got to visit a lot of the cities. We visited Brussels, Brouge, and Oend by train and then came back to our bikes and went north to the Netherlands. It’s a beautiful country. We loved our time there. And if we can do this, you can do this. [Music] Hello, Susie and Darren. Here we are in Luxembourg and we’re about to embark on our first ever I think three nights in a row camping. Isn’t this our first night? two nights wild camping and then one night at a welcome to my garden. So Susie was a little sad because she had to grab possibly three days worth of food. Not likely. We’ll probably do some restaurants. Any rate. Um so we got our three bags. Got to air up our tires and get on the road. I mean goodness it’s almost 11:00. And just like that, Shazam. We are out of Luxembourg, back into the corn fields and on a bike path. Shazam. Of course, I think the bike path lasts about 100 ft. Now we’re back on the road, but looks cool. Goodbye busy roads. Look at the detail in this fence that separates the highway from this nice life path. Isn’t that crazy, man? And it just goes on all the way down there on and on and on and on. This is lux. Look at that. It’s just us, the grains, and the birds again. [Music] Story of my life. Our lives. [Music] Donald Duck. Donald Duck. Graffiti. Belgium. [Music] Belgish town. Is that a word? Belgish. Kamut said this is the safest route they could come up with. I feel safe. So, we haven’t found our stealth camping spot yet, but look how beautiful it is. We got rolling hills. We got manure. Lots of fences so far. Yeah, I got a few fences. And uh I don’t know. So far it seems kind of exciting. Like it might actually work here to be stealth camping in Belgium. [Music] So funny that you don’t know what the route’s going to look like until you get on the route. So far, it’s beautiful. However, there’s no easy place to camp around here. I mean, there’s swamp to the right and a cliff to the left. So, there’s no camping right here. We’re just being kind of picky about what site we choose. Stealth camping pros. First, more adventure. Second, the price. It’s free. Third, the most nature and beauty. Four is the privacy. And five, it’s very quiet for good sleeping. Cons for stealth camping. One, the effort and time finding a spot. No bathroom, difficult paths to cycle there, no water or electricity, and it’s illegal in some places, which means you might be asked to leave. But all in all, we think stealth camping is worth the effort and lack of comfort. We prefer the wooded or rural areas away from cities and roads. Have you ever stealth camped? Comment below. Okay. All right. Well, welcome to Stealth Camping in Belgium. Uh, episode one. Susie and I and the mosquitoes. I’m a little concerned there could be hogs cuz there’s a lot of turned over leaves. We’ll see. We’ll hear them coming from a long way away. Yep. We’re eating a wonderful supper in the tent in the woods. Literally like five or 10 miles away from anything. And there’s a storm coming. So, what a great night. Temperatures probably mid70s. We got strawberries, salad, meat, cheese, rolls, blueberries, strawberries. Best dinner ever. Can you see us? Can you see us now? Right there. [Music] Welcome to Prone to Wander Europe Bike Tour. We are bivowite camping in Belgium. It’s Friday, June 30th. We are riding 41 kilometers today between two little towns in Belgium heading towards Brussels, the capital. Pretty sure this is the way out. Well, we found the road and I turned my GPS on. You know, it’s 54 degrees this morning. It’s crazy. I got short sleeves on. I’m cold. So, it’s still Friday, June 30. You can see exactly what I’m seeing. The up top is the entire day. A little balloon to the left is us. The first little red up and down vertical lines. That’s our first climb. I think the hands emerge from the dense forest. [Music] The less glamorous side of bike touring. When you really have to go, you go to a construction site, open the little gate, and look what we found. Bike train. [Music] European peeing. European peeing right there. He just pulled 50 yards up in front of us and just got got busy. Sure understand. If you I guess if you got to go, you got to go. You knew we were right here. You just passed us. Ordering in French is not easy, but we beat the line. Put these little zigzag things everywhere to slow people down. And look, it it really kind of works. We really need these in our neighborhood there. [Music] Yeah. So, we’re back in the woods and we’ve reached hopefully our camping place in OS Belgium. Uh, still a couple kilometers to go, but anyway, back on the gravel. Great lunch. A little bit of a challenge, a handicap when you can’t speak the language. Google translate really didn’t help us out too much. We got to our campsite. It’s like a bivowak. Um, so it’s legal camping with little benches. We’ve had nice times camping with people. Pros of Bivowak camping. You can have friendly neighbors. It’s free. There are toilet and benches at this one and it’s legal. Cons of Bowite camping. You might have close neighbors, less nature, could be noise, and these places are hard to find, but we did find we really like this type of camping. Yeah. Have you ever camped at a bivowak campsite? Please comment below. Need to figure out which way is sunset and then set up Oh, it looks good when the sun’s in the night. Cute. Thanks for watching. All right, it’s Saturday, 1st of July and we’ve got the rain and it’s about I think about 55°. Um, we had a good argument because just lots of reasons. But now we’re ready to go get some coffee in some town maybe. Thanks for joining on a grumpy day. It’s a lovely day for a bike ride up a hill. Yes, lovely day in the forest, Belgium. Our friend Pauline bugged out this morning before the rain started. We assumed she would got one, but that would have been a smart idea. I mean, we still be riding in the rain and my tip will be wet. All right, that’s it. Okay, camera’s on you. I’m having fun. And it’s wind, rain, and hills, but I’m still having fun. If there’s a shower at the end, it’ll be even more fun. And a potty and a nice clean restroom. Mhm. Guess what I did not do? Mhm. Fill up water. I’m on my last bottle. Oh, no. Um, those people smiled real big when we went by. You want to go back and see if we could fill up there? You’re in your last bottle? How much of your last bottle? They’re outside. Should we ask Hello. Can we get some water? Yes, that would be wonderful. Well, we have several. Is it okay? Are you in a hurry? Okay. Mercy. No bone. Okay. Give me your you pick me on this camera. Thank you. Thank you. Uhhuh. One. Four. Okay. Okay. Okay. That’s Thank you so much. Mercy. Hey. Hi. It’s okay. It’s okay. [Laughter] Where are you from? Texas. Oh, USA. Yes. And you, where are you from? Hey, back on the gravel. Got some sweet folks that own the Billy Goats Gruff. They let us get some water, which is very kind. Raised goats for the milk to make cheese. But they had to rush off because they had goats in the van making a mess, probably eating the seats. [Music] She got her toes out there in the 54° and no gloves and she says she’s perfectly comfortable. I, on the other hand, I got my mittens on, I got my heavy gloves on, I got my hat on, I got my sockies on, I’m rocking the Kings. There’s a car back. Yep. It’s funny how people are different. [Music] How’s this? Good. Yeah. Sandwich. [Music] Okay. Perfect. I think well we’ve noticed that the European rains don’t just come the last 5 minutes and then stop like they do in Texas. They kind of come and just stay here. So anyway, we’re still going. Had a nice little lunch of warm paninis. I’d love to tell you the name of the town, but I can’t tell you. But it was nice. We were leaving and met some sweet folks from the Netherlands. Talked with them for a while. They’re going the opposite direction. So anyway, nice time. We’re still heading to our Welcome to my garden. Didn’t want to get there too early. We’ve been riding so incredibly fast. Chuckle. [Music] We arrived at our welcome to my garden host. All right, camping spot for the evening under the tree looking over the field in Rudiger’s backyard. He said the best place is right in front of the chalet. It’s the most flat. Pros of camping at a Welcome to My Garden spot. It’s free. You meet nice local people. There’s usually a shower, toilet, electricity, and sometimes you get extras like dinner or coffee. That’s what we got this time. Cons of a Welcome to My Garden camping spot. Well, you have to message and wait for a reply from the host. That’s really the only con. We love camping at Welcome to My Garden host. Thanks for watching. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. We’re packed up after our wonderful night of welcome to my gardener. See a cup of coffee waiting coffee waiting for us this morning. He’s a biker as well. We have 50 km today to get more towards breast. Yes, that’s north. We’ve literally been going down this hill for maybe five minutes, just blowing and going straight down right around these corners. Oh, it’s beautiful. But I’m thinking, oh, we’re just bleeding off all this stored energy and we’re going to have to gain it back someday. Mim. All right, go. So, here comes the climb after the huge downhill already. Goodness gracious. I put my video on to catch you doing this amazing feat. I’m sorry. Oh, I haven’t geared down yet. No, I can’t stop. I kind of thought you might crash, so I put my um But if you did it, it was going to be amazing. All video worthy. That’s the goal. [Music] Let me repeat myself. You know what I was saying about the road less traveled? I think we found it. How in the world did we end up here? I was just on a highway. I think I might have zigged when I should have zagged. Trail I think is just to the right. How do I get over there? Oh no, I got the weevils in the wobbles. Oh, look. There’s a road far back. [Music] Why don’t we go over here and see where we’re going to go? You want to go through? Let’s go. See if you can [Music] Did I say this is Denat? D I N A N T. It’s a beautiful little town on the edge of the river. Oh, there’s a tram. See it? They’re into their saxophones. [Music] See all the saxopones? Don’t get it. [Music] All right. But today is very easy. Nice. The weather is also good also to bike. It’s nice. Yes. Very nice. We’re staying at a campground just 10 km ahead. Yeah. So, and and how long did But you go to Rome and then how many months you are? Four month. Well, 3 months in Shingen. Yeah. And then we go from Hook of Holland to Haritch and spend one more month. Yeah. Oh, so nice. Yeah. So far so good. Yeah. Okay. Most days good. Some days some days are hard. Routing is hard. And so how long does it take per lock on average? Normally 10 minutes. Oh, that’s all. Are you doing it right now? Yes. Yes. Can’t you tell he’s going down? And in France the locks are smaller. Yes. We were alone with two boats. And before Dino, we were with five boats or six, but they all stayed in Dal. Yeah. If you look up there, you can see there’s people climbing this sheer rock wall. Don’t show this to any of our kids. Okay. And there’s a guy who’s way up there. Oh my, that looks so scary. It’s 2:30. We’re arriving to a camping place right on the beautiful river. We think we are. I’m not sure it’s down here. It is Mhm. All right. So, I have to go take a shower. We’re at the campground in Where in the world are we, Susie? Data Nant just outside of Dant Toronto. All right, those motorc are loud. They’re right around a river at a campground, but the campgrounds are remarkably consistent. They usually have a place of grass that you can put your tent on. Usually pretty nice. Um, and so I have to get my handy dandy camp towel. I was going to take you to the shower with me, more or less. [Music] toiletry bag. And I always wear shower shoes when I go to the shower because when I was a teenager, I borrowed a kid’s shoes one time to play basketball or raetball or something and I got to focus on my feet. It was nasty. So, I always protect my feet now. So, you get to come on along. Okay. Be right with you. All right. So, I’ve got my shower token. Bye. Want to walk to the showers again. They’re usually pretty consistent. Pros of staying in a campground. Consistent toilet and shower. Usually, always have a spot for us so far. Cheap, usually 20 to30. And we meet a lot of nice people. Cons of staying in a campground. Sometimes they can be pretty janky. They’re sometimes crowded. There’s less nature and sometimes we’re close to highways and trafficways. We like staying in campgrounds because they’re consistent and dependable. So things are a little different in terms of your excoratory habits and exposure here in Europe. Oops. I don’t want to go looking in that room. See, that’s actually the girls. And you can just kind of look right in. It’s kind of weird. But on the back, there’s a bunch of urinal here. Toilets to the left, bunch of sinks. I can’t find the shower. Huh? One shower. There’s the one shower. Let’s see if I can do this. Not sure how to how to make that work. Anyway, so show you. Got to put your coin in there. That gives you 7 minutes of hot water. Once you get the soap and the coin and the towel and everything exactly in place, drop the coin. Aim it away from you. Aim the water away from you always first. Just like that, you have a shower. My showers have gotten a lot shorter since being in Europe. I’ve never run out of hot water now. I just always go fast. Cackle cackle. I’m back. Okay, good morning. We’re at this beautiful campground along the river. It is Monday, July 3rd. Um, and we’re riding 35 miles to a new Welcome to my garden, who has kindly agreed to keep our bikes and let us get off our tails for 5 days. This time we’ve ridden this will be our sixth day in riding and camping in the tent. So, it’ll be nice to have a little bit of a breaking. So, anyway, thanks for joining. White path right by the river. Susie, what is the name of this river? Mouse. So, we had to do a pit stop. Muse, mus. The Muse River runs north and south. I think it might go all the way to Brussels. Um, got a little tailwind. The temperature is still probably in the mid50s, maybe even low 50s. It’s cold. Dodging duck poo. Otherwise, it’s a beautiful day. Let’s find the cobbles. Maybe the cobbles find us. Would you want to be on a a boat with a tree on the front deck? That looks fun. It’s a lot of stuff to figure out. Never mind. at a pretty sharp angle. [Music] All right, welcome to Denure, Belgium. The largest town on our route today. Gorgeous place. There’s a castle up on a hill. Beautiful house boats. Trying to talk Susie into getting a canal boat when we’re old. You know, I like to plan early bridge. Hotel would be cheap. She just pulled over right here. I think we came to the wrong place. How would you How would you not lose any? [Music] I am. I’m going to go ask. [Music] [Applause] You speak English? What is going on? An activity with the bike. Um um we we learn um we learn mobility mobility with on the road. That’s exciting. Us too. Can we follow? Good luck. I hope you don’t lose any. Don’t Don’t lose any. But if you want to look for a place to eat around here, that would be fine. No, I mean like driving, not looking something up and riding. We’ve done that before. It gets frustrating. [Music] Hello. They need to go to five bathroom. Christmas trees. Anyone? Let me go. Yeah. So, I had a screw come out and thought I had checked them recently to make sure they were tight, but they hadn’t. Anyway, so this came out, which meant this whole thing was just flopping, which meant the bag was rattling terribly, and scared it break these. Anyway, pulled over and I had a spare. One spare. That’s awesome. Which is kind of scary because I don’t have any more spares. And I might have gotten that from the fellow that sold us his bag. What’s his name? Nice man with the bike shop. Alberto. Alberto. Alberto. Alberto. Thank you, Alberto. [Music] It’s awesome. So this is our garden house. Beautiful garden. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat up here. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat up here. [Music] Hey, [Music] Hi, we have finished 10 weeks out of our Europe bike tour. We still have um about six weeks to go, but we have gotten a lot of questions um from YouTube and Facebook and different people. So, we thought we would go ahead and answer some of them. We did one of these episodes previously a long time ago, just after the first month, I think. So, we got some more questions. So, here we go. You got one? I’m up. Yeah. How did you train? Um, well, we’ve kind of been doing this off and on for few years, but my first our first bike ride back in was eight years ago, we started with one mile. We both had bikes that we weren’t very good with, and so we rode down our road and back down the road, and it was not easy. The next day, we rode a little bit further. The next day, we were a little bit further. And so, we ramped it up for our trip eight years ago. And then we didn’t write a whole lot until about two years ago. Well, it was 2020. We were getting ready to go in 2020 before it got cancelled. Um, but as I look at our Strava Strava Strava. Um, probably about six months before we left, we just started gradually increasing our miles. Susie was very organized and said, “We need to be doing this many miles per week.” Anyway, so we went and just slowly ramped up our distances probably every month. Is it was it every month we increased from, you know, 30 miles to 40 miles to 50 miles? Anyway, so right before we left, we got up to 100 miles per week. And we would do that in I guess the furthest we went was 50 miles one time. Mhm. Um, and that was overkill. That was more than we would ever do or that we ever planned to do on our tour, but I just wanted just in case there was a problem or a mistake or we miscalculated something, I wanted us to be able to do it. So, we typically rode about 30 to 40. Would you say that was the Yeah. per ride? Yes. So, three or four days a week. In the last month, we got up to a 100 miles a week. for like a month, but before that it was less. But you didn’t add this. Um Darren had the idea that we should put our bikes, our bags on our bikes and start loading them up with stuff. So we started carrying the weight with us when we were going, which made it a lot harder than just riding, right? And so that was a good thing. Some of us packed everything that we planned on taking on a trip and other others of us their bags were there. But I did it more gradually. I wanted to just add a little bit at a time. So by the end it was all on the bike, but I didn’t do it like four months ahead because I would, you know, too much too much training. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Next question is, how often do you have rest days? So um most of the trip we’ve averaged riding five days a week with two rest days off. Some weeks we’ve actually ridden six days in a row and then one rest day, but a if you average all the weeks together, that’s what we’ve done. We did recently take five days off in a row to go on a train trip somewhere and that was super fun. But anyway, and we averaged riding five days a week and off too. Next question. Um, what is your top speed? Um, really fast. Really fast. I like speed. Um, top speed was 73 kilometers an hour, which I think translates to 45 miles an hour. And that was on smooth road going downhill. Blah blah blah. Anyway, how has the budget been going was a question we got. And I think we’ve done pretty good. We have averaged about $159 a day for the whole trip. And some countries have been more expensive and some have been less. Um, France has actually been the cheapest country. It was only about $80 a day. And Belgium has been the most expensive at $169 a day. I believe. But most of that is because we camped more when we were in France than in Belgium. We have had a lot of hotel days. So that’s what blew the budget. But it’s Darren says we’re doing okay with the budget. Next. How much do you ride per day? So when we first started out, we were shooting for around 50 kilometers a day. Um but we were going too fast. Uh we had to slow it down because when we average that out over the rest of the trip, we were going to finish Europe too quickly and we have our tickets on a ferry on our last day that we can stay in the EU. So we’re going too fast. So now we’re running at 43 km a day. That can vary 10% 15%. But 43 km a day is about 30 miles or so. Um, and it’s a lot easier now because when we were in the mountains, we had to shorten our distances because we were going up and up and up. Um, and now that it’s flatter getting towards the Netherlands, um, it’s easier to go 43 km. So, it’s about 27 miles a day. Um, and that should get us on target. Another question is, how long does it take to make a YouTube video? Um, I guess they averaged about two hours to make one video that’s roughly 10 minutes long. So, some have been quicker, some have been longer. So, I was getting kind of behind and um I kind of put a limit on myself of only working on it for about an hour a day because otherwise sometimes it was taking three hours and it was just too long, too much. So, anyway, I’m behind and I’ve been trying to get caught back up, but that’s about how long it takes. Darren usually has about um 30 minutes of GoPro footage every every ride day to to look through and then we have my camera and Darren’s camera to look through to find out if there’s anything good or interesting that I want to include in the video. But that’s about what it takes. Next question. What is going on with your hair? Um, so when we were in Sienna, here’s this good looking Italian dude. Long hair, wavy, had a little gray in it. I said, “Hey, man, that’s great hair.” He said, “Gracias.” Anyway, so I’ve just been lazy. Susie’s really getting tired of it. She’s like, “Kids, there’s a barber shop. There’s every barber shop.” she points out. So, we’ll see. Um, one question was, “Have you ridden with anyone?” And we did have only one day that we found a cyclist going the same direction we were and it was a sweet girl named Kate from UK and we had so much fun riding with her and talking and sharing stories and she had ridden a lot of the same distance that we had and that was a super fun day but it’s only happened one time. We would do it again if somebody else was going the same direction as we are. How’s the weather? I think it’s about 78 right now. And we are What’s the date, honey? July 10th. I don’t even know. 10th. Um, so it’s beautiful. I think it was 103 in central Texas yesterday, which is our home. So we’ll take 78 any day. It’s been beautiful. We’ve had rain probably three days out of our four days maybe out of our trip. It’s been pretty amazing. What American food do you miss? That was a good question. Uh, one thing I miss is iced coffee. And there are a few places that have it here, but it’s not everywhere. But the second thing is having free ice water everywhere. Nobody here gives you free water. And they don’t give you ice unless you ask for it. So that’s what I miss. One item I wish I wouldn’t have brought. I’m giving you two. First is this silly GoPro. It hits a tripod, you know, which is kind of cool. I guess we’ve done a few videos of us riding. Um, and it there’s a battery inside, but I find it I just hold the GoPro where it’s sticking on the bike. So, it’s a lot of weight. Probably a pound, maybe a pound and a half. Um, second thing, I wish I wouldn’t have brought my Equinox, not Keox, Helenox, Helenox chair that weighs about a pound. It’s a great chair, but it was too big and too heavy. We got rid of it, gave it to my daughter. She got tired of carrying around and just gave it to somebody. There’s a hundred bucks. It’s too much. So, I wish I wouldn’t have brought it. Uh, next question is, have you had anything stolen? No. There’s all of our stuff laying over there. Look at all the fun people. Lots of bicycles. Next question. Why do we choose our bikes? So, we had a friend who had done a bike tour. I think I may have mentioned this before. And he broke a bunch of spokes. He broke his frame. Sounded terrible. And I didn’t want to be chasing down bike shops anymore than we already had to. So, we went with Surirly. Surirly bikes. Um, you see it here. Suri, actually, Surirly bikes. They’re steel made for touring. So if the frame broke, I could weld it back together. Um, I got to weld over the last couple of years. Got to be pretty good. Working on my Land Cruiser. Um, I wanted 26-in wheels. So, I actually I had 26s, but I I got a new set of wheels. So, this I don’t know if you can tell, there’s 36 spokes, and they’re pretty beefy spokes. so that distributes the weight more evenly um in a smaller area um so the spokes are less likely to break. Also, there’s a ton of mounting things here for mounting racks on both the front um and the rear rack. So, they’re nice rear racks. So, we had to make sure these are good and steady for holding our uh packs. They each weigh probably 15 pounds or so. The big ones smaller ones weigh about 5 to seven. Um, so surly also they have these, even though we didn’t like them initially, these brakes. They’re Avid brakes. They’re cable brakes. They’re not hydraulic. So that there’s a cable connecting from here to the brake. Um, so they’re very easy to work on. Also, when you want to adjust your brakes, since we’ve gone down a lot of hills, the Alps, Aines, um you just turn the little dial a couple of times and click, click, and you adjust your brakes. Um lots of places for mounting bottles. So, I’ve got three here, one in my grab bag. I love this grab bag. Um anyway, so that was the main reason. D small diameter wheel. I’ll talk more about gear in another video sometime, but so surely bikes is what we went with. What is one item you wish you had brought that you hadn’t? I wish I had brought the regular curling iron um that I had at home instead of bringing I brought one that was a rechargeable thing that you use a USB cord. Anyway, it weighs just as much as the other one and it takes a long time to charge and it only works like one or two times. Anyway, I wish I hadn’t brought that. I wish I had brought the regular curling iron and just use the adapter for the Europe plugs. I like that. I’m sorry. So, I hope that answers some questions. I hope you’ve enjoyed the video. Um, we took a lot of days off in a row. So, are we including pictures of those five days along with this one? Well, not with this one, but we’ll include them sometime. Yes. Okay. All right. All right, guys. Bye. Welcome to Prone to Wander Europe at bike tour. We are in Belgium. We’re leaving our Welcome to our garden host. It’s Monday, July 10th, day 50 of our tour. We’re going to ride towards the town of Louven today. We’ll be riding 47 km today. Um, it’s pretty flat, so we don’t have to worry about much elevation. Belgium has been a beautiful place to ride. We have all different kind of surfaces like the single track, like concrete, like bike paths, dirt and gravel, different different surfaces. But I’d say 90% of the riding has been on bike paths of some kind. This part of Belgium doesn’t have quite as much forest as the south, but is still pretty. [Music] We love to ride through these densely wooded areas that are between each town that are just gorgeous hardwood forests. When we get to Louven, we’re going to check into a hotel to have a rest day. I love rest days. We usually catch up on laundry, grocery shopping, and just being a tourist for a while. Also, being in the hotel usually gives us good Wi-Fi so we can work on videos and also talk with our family and friends. We’re getting closer to the town of Louven and we came upon this beautiful park, a natural area on the south side of town. So, we took a look and we tried to find a place to have our lunch. How gorgeous is this place? There are several universities in Luven and a lot of young people. The town is so old. I believe it was mentioned in 700 AD as some battle was lost to some Vikings about that time. And here we are coming into the center of the old town. There’s a big old St. Peter’s Church. And as we turn the corner, you will see our hotel. It’s a super old building. First built in 1479 as a guild hall, and it was also used as a theater and a bank, but it was demolished and rebuilt a few times over the years. Hi, welcome to our room. Come on in. Nice fancy bed, nice fancy coffee area, and look at our huge window. I don’t know why they’re that tall. Um, and our bathroom is hidden behind the wall. Very tall ceilings. Think they could have put another floor in here if they So, we have some very interesting buttons here. Of course, you’re going to push the buttons. I’m going to push the one that says close. Not exactly sure what’s going on here. Take a picture after my bite. It’s fine. Hello. Sure. Which way? I don’t know yet Nick. It’s usually the second way. We are riding 45 kilometers north to a stealth camping spot near Harren’s Bell. Funny turn. It turned all the way around. All right. Well, I think we’re going that way. Me thinks so. Again, every every day we get on the bikes and I think I’m nervous. I don’t know. I hope my rout’s good. I hope I’m going the right direction. Hope I don’t miss a turn. Hope I don’t go on a mountain bike road. [Music] Hope I don’t get hit by a bus. Just got a I got a warning on my GPS. Warning, high traffic zone. and it is on the road. But look at these bike paths. So to the right, the gray is the walking path and then this red is the bike path. How beautiful is that? We are just flying out of this tailwind is so nice. They’ve got the bicycle lane all torn up something to it and uh it’s flying down the highway with this. Okay, not highway road. So, this is to my homeowners association. We could put little planters on this on our road, slow people down. Would that be cute? So pretty. It’s just cycle way. There’s no no road, no train. Just a bike path from city to city through the woods. Little bitty piece of light way at the end of this long straight foresty tunnel of bike path. This is Susie Q’s favorite type of bike riding. Very predictable, but she doesn’t mind the mountains. She just prefers this. house was built up like they were in a flood. [Music] Well, we finished a nice little supper at Hair Wrinkles. It’s a beautiful little town. Lots of restaurants, people sitting around, all locals, no tourists. Um, and now we’re heading sort of out of town toward the north where there’s some forest area and I think maybe a place where we can camp. And if not, it’s a total no-go. Then we will backtrack and go to a camping place or we’ll have to pay 20 or 30. We’d have a shower and toilet and all that. Anyway, let’s see what we find. Well, back on the dirt. [Music] Welcome to prone to wander Europe bike tour. Good morning. You told me what today was. 13th. July 13th. Thursday. July 13th. And we are in Herrentos. Sounds like high rentals. So, we in Belgium. In Belgium. So, we came to the low rent area. We’re camping in just a forest. Um I think there might have been some little tables that we could have camped by, but it was right by a busy sort of trail. Lots of dogs. And anyway, so we came here. I’ll show you where we camped. This is where our little tent was. See, I hope that’s where our tent was. Um, so we are going I think right at 43 km today. Um, and it’s flat as a pancake and we enter our ninth country. Our ninth country. We’re going into Netherlands. The Netherlands. Um, and I think we only have three days of riding till we get to Amsterdam and then we’re trying to figure out what to do. So we have no idea. We might want to take a little side trip someplace. Any rate, I’ll put on the camera. I can’t really tell. Thanks for joining. Stay put. Stay there just a second. Okay, you’re on. You’re live. That looks stupid. Uhoh. Got it. That was easy. Car right in. It’s been a while. It’s been a long time since we rock and rolled, honey. Been a lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time. I don’t know if you can see it on the camera, but it’s just really soft sand. Got harder. Why are you crying? It hurts. I thought you said you didn’t hurt anything. I mean, it hurts something. I didn’t break anything. I meant on you. Yes, it hurts. I’m sorry. I just had to say you’re in my leg. going to turn around and go a Google route. I don’t know if I can go again. Yes. Can’t explain it. Don’t know what it is. But I know I know this is the route. Wait. I think it’s the route. [Music] Yep. It’s the route. There’s lots of bicycle tires though, Susie. Or tracks, I mean. What was that? I don’t know. [Music] Yeah. Well, we’ve seen chickens on top of church towers and now we’ve got a weather radar. Either that or maybe it’s a golf call. There’s a golf course here. I don’t know. I just don’t understand. And there’s still a chicken on top. The ball on top of the church [Applause] has a long tradition in it. Purchases of artworks to display on public places. And the good Saravon Sansspect, she deni designed the moon of Vimemer. I was asked to make something around the church but was immediately confronted with the difficulty of adding something connecting something that was very beautiful in simplicity anyway. So it’s called the dark moon. The full moon on the church tower appears to be mainly a new moon. It does not give the effect we expected. H. Okay. Now, this is an interesting turn of events. I don’t know if we’ve ever had a nice bike path in a beat up road. Yay. I feel like I’m I’m the winner victory. [Music] More long straight roads, but I’m happy for the bike path. We’re trying to figure out what happens the next few days. So, these flat roads are pretty easy to travel and they’re fairly they’re smooth for the most part and be right. So, we’re trying to figure out when we would get to Amsterdam. It looks like we have about five or six days that we could conceivably do a side trip, but if we take a side trip off our bikes, that’s a lot more money. So, we have to stay in hotels and such. So, we’re just trying to figure out, okay, here’s our financial situation, here’s our time situation. We could make it to a place in Harlem um to stay at a Welcome to my garden maybe, but it would be two kind of long days of riding from tonight’s supposed to stay. I think 65 was one day. uh maybe 80 the next day. So anyway, it’s hard to figure out. So I’ll go back to sleep. Put it on autopilot. This is nice. Bike lanes, shops. Well, that might be the border. See the L?