Ride with the wind
Posted by Lieven on Sunday, January 3rd, 2021The Plan
In May 2017 we had pretty much a heat wave in Belgium. It coincided with a long weekend, which would be ideal to check if bike packing would be something I'd like.
The weather forecast was pretty certain, which is rare in our neighbourhood. We'd have a couple of days of warm stable weather and then thunderstorms on Saturday evening. I looked at the prevailing wind direction and planned a route that would give me tailwind as much as possible.
The result was a trip from my home in Gent all the way to the French costal town of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, which meant following the Scheldt river upstream and then continuing to the Somme valley and follow that river all the way to the sea.
The Trip
Day 1: Gent - Kluisbergen
Left right after work and rode 49km along the Scheldt river to get a bit closer to the French border.
Day 2: Kluisbergen - Péronne
Continued along the Scheldt all the way to its source (my first goal of the trip). Unfortunately there weren't any shops or restaurants along the rest of the route until I got to Péronne, so survived on Cola and candy for the rest of the day.
Day 3: Péronne - Longpré-les-Corps-Saints
The previous day took its toll: everything hurt. But beautiful ride along the Somme river. The camp site at Longpré was on top of a steep hill, which I had to ride up again after going out for dinner. Heavy!
Day 4: Longpré-les-Corps-Saints - Saint-Valery-sur-Somme
Short day so I could get back to Ghent on the train before the thunderstorms rolled in. Saint-Valery was extremely busy so I didn't stay very long.