Tuesday: Malle to Oosterhout

Malle to Oosterhout
~40 miles
Evening accommodations: Hotel Cafe 't Zonneke
Route/Ride Analytics:
https://www.strava.com/activities/586310521
https://www.strava.com/activities/595108991
https://www.strava.com/activities/586497416

Remember how I had tried repeatedly to set up accommodations for Tuesday night, only to have them fall through?  Seems it was for the best.  Our original plans were to go to Berkel Enschot, for the La Trappe trappist brewery.  With my leg the way it was, and traveling taking longer than we expected, we decided to scrap those plans, as they would have resulted in a near metric century on Wednesday.  We instead headed for a town called Oosterhout, where we found very reasonably priced accommodations that morning online, which shortened our overall trip by 25 or so miles.

Leaving Malle sent us into lush farmland.  We passed some amusing bread and strawberry vending machines while leaving town, amazing the things you don't know that you want until you know they exist! A few miles outside of town, we stopped to take pictures of a little canal we were to follow for some distance, and wound up talking to a friendly Belgian who wanted to hear about our trip.  After we parted ways, we followed the canal before turning in towards the forest.  We stopped off at a small lake for a few minutes, where an older couple was intrigued to hear about what a couple Americans were doing with bikes out there!

Bread vending machine

Canal we followed for a bit 

First dirt roads of the day were pretty good

When we got a few more miles down the road, we seemingly were traveling through some sort of prison area.  The roads were a rather unpleasant brick, which I neither understood nor appreciated, but which more or less continued for the next two days through the southern part of the Netherlands.  It was very meticulously built and maintained, though, and the roads did have a very picturesque appeal to them.

The never ending brick road

And it continues on.  Pic from Carissa

Nine miles in, I hit my first bit of mechanical trouble.  Despite setting my front wheel up the same way I had the other three, the cones had worked themselves loose (presumably riding over the bricks and the rough roads the day before).  We stopped for a few minutes, congratulated myself for overpacking cone wrenches, and snugged them up.  During said break, we met a guy on a horse.  Twenty minutes later, we were back on our way.

Fixing the wheel

Authentic Flanders cobblestone!

We followed this road for a bit more, until turning off into the forest proper.  As in, no more pavement, watch out for the mud holes proper.  It was on this day that I learned that one should be careful of how the Fietsrouteplanner routes you!  The bikes handled well, though.

Trails went to 'meh' in a hurry

Then to bad

It was about 2 miles after the wheel fix that we entered the Netherlands.  Sadly, as we were on some sort of forest road, there was no obvious sign telling us so, and we didn't realize it until the next bike route intersection where the markings and map indicated we were on the Brabant bicycle paths.

And then we entered the Netherlands right in this general vicinity, the tree line to the right is the border, and we hardly saw dirt again!

Small lake off the dirt trail, still in Belgium (I think)

Nothing special, just liked the looks of this intersection

The map that told us we did indeed miss the border

We continued on an actual bike path towards the unique town of Baarle Nassau (or, Baarle Hertog, depending on whether you are Dutch or Belgian).  It is a unique town, which due to land dealings between nobility in yesteryear is a patchwork of Belgian exclaves and Dutch enclaves.  As you walk down any given road, you are bound to see markings telling you that you are in Belgium or the Netherlands.  Each country has its own police force in the town, although most of the rest of the infrastructure is jointly managed, and as with everywhere, the firework shops in the Belgian parts are quite popular with the Dutch who have much stricter rules.  If you have a desire for a Belgian or a Dutch beer in particular, make sure you go to a restaurant on the right plot of land!  Oh, and the chickens are literally free roaming here moving around without a care as to the country they are in!

Back in Belgium!

Not touching Belgium!

Red lanes are for cycles in Belgium and the Netherlands

I wanted to eat there, but it was rather posh for us in cycle clothing

Another random line

Why did the chicken cross the border?

After our lunch in the unique town, we headed North towards Oosterhout.  Farmland was the scenery of the day, it was very reminiscent of where I grew up in Michigan: flat and fields for miles and miles.  Most of our bike paths at this point were located alongside roads, making navigation easier.

Speaking of navigation, we noticed a massive change from Flanders to the Netherlands.  While the signs became larger and more informative (and importantly: often accompanied by maps), they also became less frequent and often placed in hard to see areas.  Also causing us problems was the fact that new points had been added in sequence, and the maps not updated.  The result?  Much more time spent wondering if we were on the right road when we hadn't seen a sign in a mile or two, and second guessing if we missed turns.  This is a situation that would continue literally until the end of the ride in Amsterdam.  I preferred the frequency of signing in Flanders.  We missed a turn turn once the first day and a half in Flanders, once we got to the Netherlands we missed a few every day.

The last two or so miles before we hit Oosterhout were a rather nerve wrecking ride on a rather narrow path through a park with fairly blind corners.  Really the only bad trail I encountered in the Netherlands, but it mattered little.  We got into town, found our budget accommodation: a hotel above a local working man's bar.  The lady that ran the place was very friendly, and let us wheel our bikes into the walled off garden area for safe keeping overnight. We were shown to our room up one of the most ridiculously steep staircases I have ever seen in my life.

The trail was about four feet wide with two way traffic, most of it not moving slow.  Pic from Carissa

Like climbing a mountain!

Our bikes' resting spot

Our nightly activities included a walk to the town market area, where we had dinner at a place called De Beren Oosterhout, which stocked some delicious beers from the La Trappe brewery that I didn't get to.  After dinner, we stopped at Cafe de Beurs for just one more, that is until we ran into a friendly Dutchman who insisted on talking to us about everything from Dutch beer to drag racing and classic cars until midnite.  As he bought us each a bottle of a ridiculously expensive beer, from the Tre Fontane trappist brewery in Italy, it would have been rather rude to leave early :)

Downtown Oosterhout

De Beren!