Day 19:
Dinant – Deurne
131.9 kms
This day was the day of saying goodbye. After we had cycled four days together we had to say goodbye to Hans, Angelique, Johan and Sonja. They left the route and wanted to cycle to Brussels and after this back to their home.
There was a big click with this nice family and to say good-bye to them was difficult.
We had to wait till nine o’clock, because we had ordered bread at the reception. After the goodbye we didn’t think that we would see them again, but about half past nine we saw them on the other side of the Maas. Their tandem had a flat tire, again. Till eleven o’clock we cycled together and after this our lives split forever. (I thought so.)
The rest of the day we cycled through a new type of landscape. We left the Ardennes behind and entered an almost flat landscape. The landscape looked like home, like a Dutch landscape. We rode through Wallonia, the poorest part of Belgium. You could see this in everything, because the buildings in the cities were grey and the weather was also a bit depressive. It was raining again.
In the evening we entered Deurne, but our route book was wrong again.
The book told us that the camping site was on the east of Deurne, but we couldn’t find it. Because we didn’t see people, we rang a bell of a house. A woman opened the door and she didn’t know the camping site either. She said that she would ask inside. In five minutes we were surrounded by a lot of women and some men. They were all interested in our way of holiday and wanted to help us. But all these people didn’t know the camping site we were looking for. Luckily, they knew another one, but we had to cycle about 20 kms to arrive. We did and arrived at the most desperate camping site I had ever seen. In the middle was a big fishing pond (our place was just next to it) and the whole camping site was filled with caravans owned by people who came back every year.
I also called with my little sis and my mother in the evening. During this call I realised I missed them and I was happy that I would be home in one day. My mum asked me what I wanted to eat the next day. The whole holiday I had missed baked potatoes with little beans and a meat ball, so I ‘ordered’ this.
