Deerlijk, Our first night in Belgium

We left Ypres just before 2pm and instead of heading straight to Gent, which is our next visit we decided to look for somewhere on route to park up for the night for free.
I found a nice little place at a Motorhome dealership where we can sleep, get rid of our grey and black waste water and refill with fresh water and even have electric if we wanted and it is free. So far all our sleeps have been for free.
It was just a 30 minute drive to Deerlijk and we found one of four Motorhome spaces and parked up for the rest of the day. There was one Motorhome here already and another has since joined.
It seemed a little early just to sit and do nothing and is Ellie’s bum is still in recovery after yesterdays bike ride I decided to head out on my own, so I pulled a route off of my cycling app and downloaded it to my head unit, got changed and headed out.
I’d chosen a 53km mountain biking route hoping this would steer me away from traffic but it didn’t really and I ended up getting lost twice before I’d even gotten to the start of the route adding another 10km to my 53km trip. Finally, through no fault of my own I eventually found the route and started.
It took me right through the town Center to start with and I was a little concerned but there are cycle paths everywhere in Belgium and even though I had heavy traffic next to me I was in my own lane.
The route stayed alongside heavy traffic for about 10km before finally entering a park and nature reserve which is where I thought I’d be staying but this part only lasted about 5km before I left it and entered into small country lanes, also with bike lanes. Eventually I found the famous hills of flanders and started climbing. This section is obviously in the tour of flanders as cyclists names were sprayed all over the floor and I managed to fly up it over taking 2 other cyclists on the way over the top. Once on the other side and into the descent I was on the drops travelling at 60kph with the wind whistling by.
Back on the flat section I then came to a field full of reindeer which didn’t seem that out of place next to the field of mini alpacas. Then I was off the road completely and onto mud and then deep sand. I was grateful to get back onto the tarmac.
Once my head unit hit 40km I wanted to head back to Wanda. Doing the extra 10km had cost me a lot of time and it had now gone 6pm and the light was fading and temperature was dropping. I was glad I’d put on my arm warmers before leaving.
I had no choice but to complete the route as I didn’t have a clue where I was or where Wanda was and finally at 6:30pm I got back to Wanda. I’d enjoyed the ride but not the route. But Belgium is a great place for bikes.Read more