- August 2021 Bike Holiday – Day 1
- August 2021 Bike Holiday – Day 2
- August 2021 Bike Holiday – Day 3
After a good night’s sleep and breakfast, it was time to set off once more
Logies de Klaproos is situated in an old farmhouse
A little chapel next door
Stevensweert is a surrounded by a ring of fortifications built by the Spanish in the 15th century
The village is situated on an island between two branches of the Meuse: de Oude Maas (Old Meuse), which you saw on the last photo in the last post, and de Grensmaas (Border Meuse), which you see here with Belgium on the other side
This cannons were obviously not put there by the Spanish, which means they’re probably used to keep the Belgians at a distance
Het Geudje Castle, which was built the 16th century in the style typical of the region around Liège, Maastricht and Aachen (‘Style Mosan’)
De Oude Maas
De Oude Maas
I would say that this is the ordinary version of Style Mosan architecture
One last (abandoned) roadside brothel before we cross into Belgium (where there are more of them, even though I didn’t see any on this trip)
Oh sorry I forgot, Belgium doesn’t exist (at least, there’s nothing that tells you it does here). So welcome to Flanders. In case you didn’t know, Flanders is the area between the Netherlands and Wallonia where they speak a kind of Dutch called Flemish. This is also the border between two provinces of the same name (Limburg), where they speak similar dialects (Limburgs). Strangely, neither province has anything to do with the original Duchy of Limburg, which lay just south of the borders of the current provinces, in what is now the French-speaking part of Belgium (Wallonia).
Number 122 of the 365 border markers that were placed since Belgium gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1830
The Grensmaas, which is the main course of the river, but is unnavigable (ships use the Juliana Canal a few kilometers to the east instead)
Looking south, the direction I was heading in (I didn’t visit Maaseik, but I have shown you this little town before)
I passed this same quarry in 2006, when it didn’t look quite the same
I was pleased to find out that there is a country called Belgium after all. This flag is a memorial to bunker A 23, which doesn’t seem to have been very effective at stopping the German invasion in May 1940. I’m not obsessed by WWII or something, it’s just that you’re reminded of it really often when travelling through Europe (or reading about the places you visit). It makes me grateful to live in a time when I can freely cross these borders as often as I like
The ferry from Meeswijk to Berg aan de Maas (NL), was being repaired following the floods that affected this wider region in July. I was surprised (but happy) that I hadn’t seen any signs of them yet
Crossing back into the Netherlands for the last time
Zuid-Willemsvaart
A lock linking Zuid-Willemsvaart to the Meuse
The southern end of Zuid-Willemsvaart
Maastricht is a very tidy city, even by Dutch standards, but it still has some nice forgotten corners
Lock 19, after which I’d say Zuid-Willemsvaart is unnavigable nowadays
Maastricht (population: 120,000) , the capital of Dutch Limburg and the oldest city in the Netherlands together with Nijmegen, is a very beautiful city despite what I said about it before on SSC (which you probably don’t remember)
I still don’t like the new buildings by the river though, one of which you can see here, behind the city hall. Apart from that, Maastricht’s Markt (where there was actually a market at the time) has to be one of the most impressive squares in the Netherlands
In Vrijthof, Maastricht has another of the country’s finest squares
Maastricht draws a lot of visitors from both Belgium and Germany and the rest of the Netherlands, and is pretty busy at times
The Jeker river
Leaving Maastricht at the foot of Sint-Pietersberg (Mount Saint-Pieter), which is really a mountain by Dutch standards
I was back in Belgium, now in the French-speaking part, as soon as I left the city
Cycling a road I had been down many times before
The lock connecting the Canal of Maastricht to the Albert Canal
Looking back towards Maastricht
Looking east towards the southernmost part of the Netherlands
Ecluse de Lanaye and Mount Saint Peter, which is cut in half by the Albert Canal
Heading south
Village fête
The Cockerill (now ArcelorMittal) steel mill in Chertal
Liège’s urban area starts at Pont de Wandre in Herstal
Ile-Monsin and its lighthouse
Things are starting to change in Liège, but at the moment that mostly means that a lot of stuff is being demolished
A residential neighbourhood will soon arise here, at the terminus of Liège’s new tram line
The neighbourhood of Droixhe
Arriving in the city of Liège, where I spent 8 years of my life, for the first time since November 2018
The Cité Administrative (municipal administration) is being renovated (and not demolished, as I’m sure a lot of Liègeois would prefer)
The Meuse a few hundred metres from where I used to live
It didn’t take long for me to be reminded of the things that annoyed me when I lived in Liège
Why is the little space left for people who aren’t in cars always like an obstacle course?
Why are there always road works? And why do they always block the pavement?
This annoyance might have had something to do with memories of my last months in Liège, when I was out of work and when my landlord did this to the house I lived in in
But it didn’t take long (after I’d found out that the route I used to take up this hill was blocked) that I was reminded of one of the many reasons that Liège is a unique city
The typical Liège back garden of the airbnb I stayed in, which was in the house of some friendly locals
I didn’t spend long there though, for it was time to revisit the city
Saint-Martin’s basilica
A friend of mine used to live in the house on the corner
Liège is very old and authentic
The neighbourhood of Pierreuse
The former palace of the prince-bishop, who ruled quite a large area for 800 years until the French revolution
The architecture in the old parts of Liège is similar to that in Maastricht
The last photo I took before it got dark, after which I went to have a pizza and enjoyed the evening atmosphere of Liège, which on is pretty active on Fridays