On s’amuse sur la Meuse (second edition)

Today was, in most respects, one of those days we cycle tourists live for: varying scenery, wonderful weather (mostly), good food, and good company.

After a slow start to the day, owing to indifferent sleep—we tend not to suffer overly from jet lag on these trips, but lingering effects in the first few are not unexpected—we hit the road just before 10 am, a cool morning but the sun shining brightly. We wandered through some farm roads (in better condition that 90 percent of Quebec roads!) and eventually hooked up with the Eurovelo 5, which took us into Namur. A good chunk of this was a beautifully paved rail trail with a pretty good grade down into the Meuse/Sambre valleys—coasting down kilometre after kilometre made a nice change from the up-and-down of the past few days.

Namur is lovely, with a very quaint historical district. We got off the bikes and walked around, enjoying the bustle of the restauranteurs putting out tables and chairs for the lunch crowd. We found a nice little bakery, where we had our traditional mid-morning pastry and coffee, then found a grocery store to pick up the few items we were missing for lunch.

The traditional morning pastry break

The route up the Meuse, south from Namur, is exceedingly beautiful; it reminded us somewhat of our last trip down the Moselle, minus the vineyards. The bike route is essentially the old towpath, so mostly away from the road, but the quality varies from newly paved asphalt to seemingly centuries-old cobblestones (thankfully not for long stretches at a time) and everything in between.

Beautiful scenery on the Meuse

We had a very nice little picnic lunch alongside the Meuse and were on our way again before long, but by then, we realized that the weather had begun to change. The last hour of our ride was punctuated with the odd shower, at times enough to make us put on our rain jackets, but no where near a drenching.

We rolled into Dinant just after 4 pm and found our lodgings, a wonderful little room overlooking the river. We quickly dropped off our things and went to explore—Dinant is as picturesque a town as any you’ll find in Europe. Then we headed to the grocery store to pick up things for dinner and back to the room and the communal kitchen to make a simple supper. A full day, but a wonderful day to start our run down this beautiful river.

Photo op beside Adolphe Sax

Beautiful. Dinant