Our night at the campsite in Dinant was dry inside, but very wet outside; there were some heavy thunderstorms with massive downpours, but luckily our tent stayed dry. The weather had improved by the morning, so once we got up it was nice and we could have a good breakfast outside. The day was forecasted to be very rainy, with possibly heavy showers, but we were lucky: we had an almost entirely dry and beautiful day! Thank you, weather gods!
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| A typical view on a Belgian campsite: permanent caravans, each with its own "garden" with fencing and all within the camping. Silly, really. |
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| At the riverside near sunset, with Dinant in the distance. |
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| A very nice campsite, just beside the river, but with the noisy railroad across on the other side. |
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| A few small boats were waiting for their fishermen... |
We rode the entire day along the Meuse, from Dinant first into France in Givet, and then further until a place called Revin. It’s marvellous cycling, almost entirely on dedicated cycling tracks, alongside the Meuse river, and regularly passing through charming French villages. It’s funny how the look and feeling of these villages change, even though you have just crossed the border, and Belgium is only a few kms away. Suddenly it all feels like you want a baguette, and a Ricard on a terrace.
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| Between Dinant and Givet, a few kms on a secondary road instead of a cycling path, but very nice riding. Notice the Freyr Castle in the distance (which we didn't visit but it looked nice). |
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| In France meanwhile, just outside Givet, with more beautiful Meuse cycling. |
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| Still Givet. |
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| The town of Revin, a small northern French town where nothing much happens... |
Once in Revin – after 73 very nice kms – we were still lucky, the rain left us aside, and we walked a bit through the village. A nice thing about France is, that you can have nice food at very reasonable prices – if you take the menu of the day. So we had such a menu, enjoyed a 3-course meal, for only 12,90 EUR! No way you could get that in Belgium – in fact, in Namur we had to be careful not to go to a place where just a simple spaghetti cost 13 EUR… We’ll definitely do some camp cooking, but it’ll regularly be a menu of the day as well!!!
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| A new experience, just outside Revin: the cycling trail goes through a tunnel, shared with... the canal!!! |
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| Another typical stretch of cycling lane; the water on the right side is a short canal, parallel with the Meuse, used as an entrance to a small sluice. Every few kms there is such a sluice on the Meuse, making the river accessible for small boats. |
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| Today's short but heavy downpour |
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| Arrival in Charleville-Mésières, with good weather again, and plenty of terraces to choose from. |
From Revin it was another 45km still along the Meuse to Charleville-Mésières, and there we had a – you guessed it – great lunch a la menu of the day. This is also where we left the Meuse, and continued on small departmental roads in the general direction of Amiens. We ended up in Signy l’Abbaye, a small village with an equally small campsite, very charming, it almost feels like wild camping. Only 1 other tent here, and beautiful hilly surroundings. And oh yes, today we did have a downpour while cycling, the first one since we left Leuven; it didn’t last long and the rest of the day was sunny and nice – yes, again!!!
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| Now riding along the departmental roads, with hardly any traffic and wonderful scenery. |
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| Same road, different view. |
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| Once at the campsite, it was time to dry our stuff. Some was wet because of the rain, the tent and some related things were very damp this morning (from the dew) and were packed that way. Good chance to get them fully dry first! |
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| View from outside our tent! |
