Rotterdam > Grimbergen [Tue 05 Jun | 185.85 km
Rotterdam > Zwijndrecht > Moerdijk > Oudenbosch > Roosendaal > Wildert > Antwerpen > Willebroek > Grimbergen
Grimbergen > Cambrai [Wed 06 Jun | 164.07 km]
Grimbergen > Brussels > Halle > Enghien > Halle > Stambruges > Valenciennes > Cambrai
Cambrai > Paris [Thu 07 Jun | 217.32 km]
Cambrai > La Fere > Noyon > Verbiere > Montagy-Ste-Felicite > Dammartin > Claye-Souilly > Paris
I left Rotterdam "lateish" for me on tour - around 9am - and set off through Holland, headed for Brussels or thereabouts. I hadn't managed to track down any Belgian messengers to hook up with, and none had shown up in Rotterdam, so i didn't really have any contacts until Paris, but I wasn't terribly worried about that.
The ride from Rotterdam to almost the Belgian border was through seemingly endless expanses of flat farmland, interspersed with (yes, you guessed it) canals - but all on smooth roads that were easily tracked on the brilliant 1:50000 cycling maps that ANWB produces. I can't recommend these maps enough - the detail is astounding, and they split each sheet into 4 easily handled smaller sheets. All the bike routes are marked in full, and you can even spot land sections - of course, even if you're not on an actual bike path or route in Holland, riding is inevitably pleasant. Smooth roads do that to you.
Just before crossing into Belgium, the landscape started to switch to being more of a deciduous forest, spotted with these gargantuan purple rhododendron bushes, which are really quite stunning. The Belgian cycling maps I had (published by Geocart - not recommended) were a sharp contrast to the Dutch maps - virtually no topographic detail, just a bunch of colored lines all over the place - sometimes bordering on unreadable. I think nest time I'll opt for a more basic topo, and wing it on the bike path information, as Belgian bike paths are spotty, compared to the paradise of Holland. On more than one occassion I found myself rerouting simply because they just disappeared... The only major routing hassle was getting around Antwerp, which basically ended up being a ride around the ring road, but i fudged that route and found my planned route on the other side of the city fairly easily.
Since I had no real reason to head straight into Brussels, having no contacts there, I decided to stop for the night in Grimbergen, about 10km or so outside the city, which was close enough to satisfy my "need" to keep on "schedule" (this concept would rapidly dissolve, like it always does on tour) - and it's home to one of Belgium's justifiably famous abbey breweries. It's quite a nice little town, with cobbled streets galore - had a little trouble at first, finding the campground which the abbey workers had directed me to, but with the help of a nice couple at a frites stand, I got turned around correctly (they even had xeroxed maps to hand out cause so many cyclists and backpackers apparently make the same error I did). Turned out to be quite a nice little campsite, not even a quarter full, and the cost for a site for the night was a mere 200 bef! (about $4, at then-current exchange rates) Set up camp next to a nice couple from New Zealand, who were on the road for 6 months, cycling north to Scandinavia and then around back down to Madrid!
The next morning found me up and about early, and off through Brussels, which was quit a bit easier to cycle through than Antwerp was - thanks to a canal running straight through town. I do think, however, that if I were to choose one of the 2 to come back to visit, it would have to be Antwerp - the cathedral is fantastic, and Brussels is quite a bit harsher and more industrial. Stopped for lunch at about the 80km mark - which was to become my usual stop-for-lunch mileage for the rest of the tour on to Zurich - next to a slow-lowing canal near Tongre-St-Martin. Bike paths were a mix along the route - from dirt tracks and the amazing dissappearing kind, to full-blown separate paved tracks. Around Huissignes, I passed up the Musee de la Vie Rurale (Museum of Rural Life), which would have been interesting to stop through, but became, like the abbey in Grimbergen, a casualty of my pace.
Most of France from the border crossing (which i made on a dilapidated trestle bridge somewhere in the middle of nowhere) to Cambrai wasn't really all that impressive, but the maps were good. The 1:100000 series published by the Institute Geographique Nationale were a substantial improvement over the maps I had been using through Belgium, that's for sure, even if they didn;t show bike paths at all. That was ok - French bike paths turned out to be as unpredictable, if not more so, than Belgian ones were. I rode the N30 most of the way on to Cambrai, which, despite being a fairly major road, wasn't all that bad, traffic-wise. The only major mess was a nasty cloverleaf just outside Valenciennes, which I would go out of my way to avoid completely if I do this route again.
Didn't end up making it all the way to St. Quentin, as I had originally planned, but stopped for the night in Cambrai. After some unsuccessful hunting for a campground (note to self: don't leave book listing french campgrounds at home in SF while touring in France), found a small bar near the railway station that had small rooms upstairs. Managed to convey what i wanted to the owners, despite them speaking no English, and me understanding only the most rudimentary of French (and speaking even less), in the process dispelling one more of the "things I've always been told about France": "French people treat Americans with disdain". They don't except maybe in Paris, and then, if you were bombarded with stupid American tourists all the time, you'd treat them like crap too. Also dispelled was "French people drive like maniacs" (actually, they do, but they're ok if you're a cyclist - I am of the distinct impression that the average French driver would rather take a head-on collision in the opposite lane than pass a bike too closely) and "You can't find beer in France" (whoever said this obviously must've been trapped in a wine store).
Spent most of that night staying up, being bought beers by the local bar patrons (who also couldn't speak English), and getting slaughtered in table soccer, which the locals insisted on playing with me, despite the fact that i wouldnt stand a chance against them if they had to play only using their teeth, and I was given a head start of 9 points. The room itself was nice enough - 2 twin beds a sink, and one of those floor-level basins that I never quite figure out what to do with, and a good view of the square out front of the station. Checkout was 7am, and I figured on getting out as close to then as possible, cause I had visions of making Paris the next day, which would take every spare hour I had.
Paused for breakfast of croissants and chausson aux pommes about 30km in - I had begun to notice variation in how these were made over the last day or so - some had more of an applesauce filling, while others had a chunky filling, and while the basic shape remained unchanged, the decorative cuts on the top showed substantial variation. Inevitably, post-Cambrai, I spotted more than a few campgrounds, bed & breakfasts and Gite Rurales that wouldve done just fine for places to stay had I kept moving, but I don't think I wouldve traded the fun I had had that night hanging out in Cambrai. More of the beauty of bike touring - sometimes your changed plans lead to adventures more entertaining than you might have predicted.
Weather was generally getting a little cooler, and even with a slight wind from my right front side, I was making great time. Happenned on the fastest route through Compiegne purely by accident, which cut some time off the trip - though Compiegne looked like it actually would've been worth exploring, but my goal was Paris by nightfall. By this time, I'd been rained on, soaked and dried out twice already this day, and I was due to get one more drenching before the day was out - from 50km outside Paris it'd be nothing but rain.
I'd been warned that getting into Paris by bike was a bitch, but I didn't find it to be so. (one more dispelled rumor about France) If you're arriving from any direction from the west, it's well worth circling around to Claye-Souilly to follow the Canal de l'Ourcq straight into Paris. It's bike path most of the way, and even when it isn't, it's easy to follow - cause it's acanal. Was quite nice to breeze into Paris where I'd been warned it could take the better part of a day!
Called my friend David from about 20km out, and set up to meet him along the canal farther in, as I'd cleverly misplaced the phone number of my old girlfriend Sorrel, who I hadn't seen in nearly 7 years, and had been going to art school in Paris for the last few years. We ran into each other near the railway yards near Pantin, just outside the ring road, and rode the rest of the way in casually, a nice change from my hectic pace in the rain for the last few hours.
Maps used:
ANWB Fietsmaps: Dordrecht, Breda (Holland)
Geocart Fietskaart: Antwerpen, Brabant, Hainaut (Belgium)
Institute Geographique Nationale "Top 100" #s 4, 9 (France)
On to Paris