Roggel to Maastricht

Another hot day, so I planned to be on my way early. I was up at 7:31 and fully packed and rolling away at 8:01, so 30 minutes. Of coruse breakfast was next which I had at the closed cafe at the front of the camp. I finally set off at 8:30. I had a fairly simple plan today, follow the road signs to Horn and then head south using some of the ANWB bike routes. On the way to Horn I got caught behind a group of school girls on their way to school. It was too hard to pass them so I just meandered along at their pace, pretty easy.

After Horn I headed south and ended up in Belgium. It was a bit unexpected because the country borders are not marked on the ANWB map. I had just assumed that I was staying in the Netherlands. It was easy to tell I was no longer in the Netherlands, the bike paths stopped being off road, immediately. Instead there was a rather decent 2 metre path on the side of the road. I imagine as you move further from the border the paths slowly disappear :)

I headed south for a bit and then crossed back and stayed in the Netherlands for the rest of the day. I rode along some very lovely bike paths. There were actually some hills, today. They were not so tall, often just getting up onto the top of the dyke and then over a bridge to cross the canal, but they were tiring. Later in the day there were even a few real climbs, around 5-6%! Needless to say I was pretty stuffed at the top even though they were only 20 or 30 metres high.


Once in Maastricht I was starving and quickly checked out the eating options and picked a place with pasta. Now I was obviously a bit tired at this point because I thought, “Oh, Italianse Bol”, some sort of Italian bolognese, excellent, and ordered that. While I was sitting there I was browsing the rest of the menu and there was a pasta section. It was then that I remembered that Bol is bread roll in Dutch :) Oh well, what I got in the end was a delicious plate of beef with capscicum, onion, mushies, tomato on a large bun and sweet chilli sauce. Delicious!

I then rode to Nicole's place. After showering etc we sat until Nicole had to go and get their son who'd had an accident playing rugby, just a bruise on his head, nothing major. For dinner we ad a BBQ, a very pleasant meal of kebabs and sausages, baguette and salad. Also Tiramisu and jelly for dessert! We sat outside until quite late, maybe 10 pm and then sat inside until almost midnight.