La Condruzienne - Day 3 - Camping Paradiso - Anseremme

This is the (short) route we rode today:

Just as I was falling asleep a thunderstorm erupted above the camping. It started with lightning and thunder and then the winds came. Although the tent stayed upright I was helping the tent with that goal at a certain point 😇 It poured for 20 or 30 minutes and we still saw the evidence of that this morning.

When I woke up, I couldn’t find my shorts and after searching through my tent multiple times it hit me: I had put my short on my bike to dry yesterday! I guess I wouldn’t be wearing that short today 😂 Luckily it was still on the bike when I got out of my tent!

Yesterday we had to leave the route to get to the camping so we had to get back on it. We tried one way but came across a gate that indicated it was for walking only. We have continued multiple times in other situations but with the thunderstorm the previous night and the fact that this route was near a cliff and could be pretty rocky we decided to turn around. This meant we would skip a part of the route but so be it. When we were back on the route we cycled backwards for a bit as there was a nice view there.

And then we continued on with the route. This part was a single track going uphill and with the rain of previous night it was muddy:

And when I say muddy, I mean muddy, my wheels were under water multiple times and we had to walk quite a while. We also had the gift of needing to cross a small river.

We ploughed on but Bart was getting a sore throat and a headache. We stopped to take a painkiller and continued on. But it became quickly apparent that the last 2 nights with not a lot of sleep and Bart becoming ill was slowing us both down, as i wasn’t feeling super either.

When we came across another river crossing where we thought the chance of wet feet was too high we decided to take another road. It was still going uphill and it was offroad but it least we kept our feet dry. We were also feeling pretty cold as there was quite a lot of wind.

We arrived in Houyet and there was a mini market there so we decided to stock up on some food and make a plan for the rest of the day. It was already 11:15 and we were only 20km far. We looked at our options and one option was to cycle 17km and 200hm on a bigger road. The other option was taking the train (Houyet had a station, how lucky are we!) and skipping a day of the route.

We decided to take the train as we had no idea how dangerous the road was going to be.

When we arrived in Anseremme we ate a spaghetti and got warmed up. We visited the supermarket and rode to our campsite. We got our tents set up, chilled a bit, took a shower and I took a nap.

We have no idea what we will do tomorrow. If Bart gets better we can continue the route, otherwise we’ll take the train home.

But now it’s time for some dinner! See you tomorrow.