Returned today from a nice two day, 150 km cycle ride, once again through some of Belgium’s beautiful nature parks.
I left home yesterday, a little after 08:00 and headed north-west towards Berg aan de Maas where I took the ferry across the river Maas and into Belgium.
Just prior to this I crossed the Juliana Canal, which is undergoing major works between Berg and Born.
It was very unusual to see this section of the canal drained with much heavy machinery excavating and removing material from the bottom of the canal.
I read afterwards that these major works are to widen and deepen the canal to enable larger ships to navigate here.
Unfortunately the works will last until May of next year and meanwhile considerable disruption is being cause to the inland shipping industry.
Once in Belgium I cycled a circular route through scenic Belgian countryside before finding my overnight B&B at Dilsen-Stokkem.
My route yesterday included the new pontoon bridge for cyclists and pedestrians, within the Terhills holiday resort near Maasmechelen.
This new route, only open a few weeks, is known as ‘Cycling Between Terrils’, literally translated to ‘Cycling Between Slag-Heaps’.
There are two large man-made hills here, left over from the long-closed deep coal mines nearby.
This whole area has now been re-purposed as the Terhills Holiday Resort.
The bridge itself is very impressive and yesterday was extremely busy with cyclists and pedestrians.
This morning I was on the road quite early, before sunrise and made my way through Hoge Kempen National Park, so beautiful in the early morning light.
Today’s featured image is from that area, totally un-filtered in any way.
The rising orange sun behind me cast it’s light onto already golden autumn colours, reminding me just how wonderful mother nature can be.
There are many pictures from the past two days, which certainly tell the story of this ride.
