Hills and more hills: Rochefort to Bastogne

Fri 25 Aug

We took a long time to get away today - not until 10 a.m. which was an imperfect way to start the day given we have a big number of kms to cover and it looked like being hilly. I had had a restless night - a lot of traffic noise which could only be subdued with the window closed which meant the room was hot and stuffy. What do they do here in the summer????

Took even longer to exit town. We took a lovely bike path out to Jemelle (3 kms) but took a wrong turn and found ourselves back in Rochefort ... not a good start. We had to go back again and eventually got to Jemelle where we searched desperately for somewhere to buy water and finally found a tiny supermarket.

We turned out of Jemelle for Forrières and as we passed the station, I saw a bar and, as 'the natives' were getting restless, I thought a stop (even though we were behind time) might be a strategic move. 

And so we sat in the sun and enjoyed a short stop with coffee and a pastry with chocolate inside. David said he could stay there all day ...

At this stage it was 11 a.m.so we weren't getting anywhere fast!

The ride to Forrières was lovely, it was mid-20s and the hills gentle. It can't last, I thought.

It didn't. It was 18% from the Fourneau St-Michel.

Bloody awful climb; it DID beat me and I had to get off and it was just as hard work walking up hill and pushing the bike. Got on again and it went up and up and up and up.

It was 515m at the top and we then descended to St-Hubert (our mid-way stop) at 470m. Pretty ordinary hamburger lunch here.

Luckily I called into the Tourist Office to check our directions; the woman there said our planned route to Bonnerue was blocked so we had to change plans and go via Vesqueville.

First we had to exit St-Hubert with a steep climb up the main street - we walked half of it. The climbing continued towards Moircy (at 503m) and kept on going: up and down without respite for the remainder of the day.

It started to rain after Moircy and we had an interesting wet ride through forest to Tillet which was fairly 'off-piste'. Putting on the wet-weather gear:

It was all very pretty but hard hard work grinding uphill. Every uphill was rewarded with a wonderful downhill but we knew we'd have yet another uphill.

We made a navigational error here, although I have to say I let Andrew be in charge of maps today and I must say he did a pretty good job of it (despite his having a 'wobbly' before coffee at the station at Jemelle this morning: he wanted to catch a train; we had only gone 6 kms at that point!!; I had to explain that, even though there was a station here, that 'no' there was NO train going in the direction we were headed - I assured him I had checked this out thoroughly!! I don't think he believed me ...).

Even though the sign was pointing to Bastogne, our destination, we seemed to have missed the turnoff to the route we had worked out - all planned around quiet roads. But we worked out an alternative, even though it meant crossing under a RED road (N4), riding extra kms albeit along pretty, quiet roads with lots of ups and downs, under the N4 again and into Bastogne the back way.

The rain had stopped and it was a nice afternoon, although getting late - we got in close to 6 p.m.

Seriously, I defy anyone to find a more hilly route from Rochefort to Bastogne than what we did today. If there was a hill, we climbed it.

As luck would have it, we almost ran into our hotel pretty close to where we entered town. We had showers and immediately set out for food.

Just around the corner was the main plaza - Place McAuliffe -with a U.S. Sherman tank from WWII. General Anthony Clement "Nuts" McAuliffe was a senior U.S. Army officer who earned fame as the acting commander of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division troops defending Bastogne.

The Siege of Bastogne was an engagement in December 1944 between American and German forces at as part of the larger Battle of the Bulge. Because all seven main roads in the densely wooded Ardennes highlands converged on Bastogne, just a few miles away from the border with neighbouring Luxembourg, control of its crossroads was vital to the German attack.

We found a fantastic place to eat; the service was amazing and we piled into a big calorific intake with the boys enjoying La Corne beers - what a hoot! David said Asterix (character from his favourite childhood book) drank like this!

I like this from the website: "The full name of these beers is La Corne du Bois des Pendus which loosely translates to 'The Horn of the Forest of the Hanged'. It originates from a legendary story from 1636 in the modern day Ardenne region of Belgium. The 30 Years War was in full swing and a group of mercenaries from eastern Europe killed about 100 villagers - by mistake! Well, they meant to kill them but the mercenaries thought they were in France killing French people, which they weren't. (Let's all just take a moment and be thankful for GPS.)"

We had a pleasant walk along the main drag after dinner - amazing number of expensive cars. Nice shops. Plus this nice decoration - over the street - of umbrellas.

Seems like a pretty well-to-do place. Despite having had dessert, we finished off the food intake with a yummy icecream. Couldn't resist.

Ride: climbed 1038 m; 62 kms