I’d meanwhile met up with the newfound cycling buddy, Jack (a friend from uni), a few times to start figuring out the practicalities of the trip. First on the list was finding him a bike – kind-of crucial. Our bike-hunting eventually turned up just what we were after, albeit located rather conveniently on the other side of town. Maastricht’s luckily not too big a place, and we got the bike home one way or another. A few days and a couple of workshop sessions later, we had ourselves a totally new set of wheels and one Jack ready to hit the road.
The plan is for Jack to join for the first few days up until Luxembourg City, where we’ll part ways since he needs to head back to Maastricht for work. It’ll be great to have some company, especially for the first bit of the trip while still getting used to it all!
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It was a Tuesday morning, and departure day had finally arrived. We both had some last-minute errands and shopping to get done in the morning and needed to send out a few Couchsurfing requests for the first couple of city stops, so it was late afternoon by the time we headed out.
Within minutes we were over our first border and cycling into Belgium. It was one of those anti-climatic Schengen border crossings where you could practically miss the small sign informing you that you’ve made it to a different country – only, Belgian roads being what they are, you actually feel it instantly.
We had some easy cycling for the first few kilometres, along a canal with beautiful views on either side. As we reached the point where the canal merged with the river Maas, though, we came across our first obstacle. We realised that the route we had plotted cut straight across the river – over what we had assumed to be a bridge. The only problem, though – no bridge in sight. Just a deserted, unpaved road leading down to the river. As it turned out, this was actually a ferry crossing. To our luck, as we sat down trying to figure out a new route over the river the ferry actually appeared at the bottom of the dirt road. It wasn’t long before us and the bikes were on our way over the river, and at €1 per person+bike I’m calling this a bargain!
As we left the river and headed further inland, we got our first taste of hills. With them came our (somewhat tastier) first taste of foraged fruit too. We spotted a prune tree by the side of the road and pruned away. By the time we were done the sun was starting to inch closer to the horizon, and since we still weren’t too sure about how this whole wild camping thing would turn out, we decided to check out the first potential camping spot we came across. A few kilometres on, we found a dirt road forking off uphill into some fields and took it. The spots it led to weren’t perfect, but at least for the first night, they’d do.
As it turned out, both Jack and myself had actually (and totally coincidentally) gotten the exact same tents. Which was for the better – besides looking great in the photos, that made it a whole lot easier to pitch them. We started out at an already-respectable five minutes per tent, and must have halved that just a few days later.
With the tents pitched and panniers unpacked, we had some quick dinner and decided to call it a night.
