We woke up this morning in Germany, rode through Netherlands and tonight we are in Belgium!

Well, just a small detail…we actually had a ride by van for part of the way. We originally had hoped to cycle the Vennbahn back to Aachen where we would catch the train to Maastricht(we had done this on a previous trip in reverse), but after some research discovered that the train line between those 2 cities is under repair and it is necessary to take a bus in between. The buses do not take bicycles! So…more research and a few Euros more and we found Raimond who has a shuttle service for people and their bicycles! (Found it on the Vennbahn site.) He picked us up at our Pension in Roetgen and dropped us off outside of Maastricht in the town of Bunde where we could easily get to the MAAS River cycle route. It took about 50 minutes. That was the easy part! We cycled to a ferry for bicycles to take us across the Maas but when we got there it wasn’t running even though the sign said it ran from April to October 31! Soooo, we had to cycle about 5 km north to a very busy bridge over the river and then another 7 km south on the other side of the river to get to Rekem ( Belgium)where our BnB is located. All in a day’s excitement here on the trail! Then we went for a ride (sans panniers) into the Hoge Kempen National Park.

There is the ferry on the other side…no sign of the captain!

Small country (Netherlands), large pumpkins!