When I wrote my
previous blog post, we were in Biganos, still in the Gironde. What I didn't write back then, was that I had a bit of a fever - because I thought it would be nothing, like gone in 24h or so, nothing to write about. It started suddenly on Saturday evening, and we already cycled again from Le Porge to Biganos on Sunday - so I thought it wouldn't be a thing. Maybe a slight food poisoning from the mussels I had or so. However, 4 days later I was still having fever, and after checking with a doctor back in Belgium and weighing our options we decided - once again, like also happened on our
Vietnam and
Taiwan trips - to end our trip prematurely and return home. Was it covid19 or not? Best to get it sorted out at home.
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We stayed 4 days in Biganos and didn't do much; we did have a very nice picnic at the Biganos Port however, a place worth visiting.
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Getting back home with the bicycles was not as easy as we would have expected. Most fast trains (TGV) don't carry non-folded bicycles. There was one from Biganos however (at 6am in the morning) on which we could, and it was very well organised. The train took us in less then 3 hours to Paris for a very reasonable cost (88 EUR including the bikes!)
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In Paris we had to ride from Montparnasse station to Gare du Nord, a nice short ride through the centre of Paris - with a stop for breakfast on the way, croissant and coffee!
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And a quick inspection of the progress of the Notre Dame reconstruction, while passing through...
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From Paris, we had another 4 trains to go. There are many direct fast trains from Paris to Brussels, but these don't take bicycles. So we took the regular regional trains: from Paris to Amiens, Amiens to Lille, Lille to Kortrijk and finally, Kortrijk to Leuven. All in all it went quite smoothly, a few small hiccups but nothing too bad. And we still had a nice, cheap and pleasant daily menu lunch in Lille - a city with a nice vibe.
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Once back home, time to give everything a good rinse!
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Even if we could have got it all done in France, the cases are everywhere on the rise again, and things are becoming more uncertain again to travel around... Especially to travel on a bicycle. On the one hand, it is a very safe (virus-wise) and flexible way to travel, but on the other hand if for some reason you get into trouble and have to return, it's not that straightforward... We didn't want to get stuck somewhere, or risk another quarantine when getting back to Belgium eventually.
We don't know yet what the next few months will bring. Malaysia just reintroduced a mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine for new arrivals - something we don't feel like doing unless we really have to. Travel does not seem the smartest thing to do for the moment, unless the growing unrest over the corona virus eases down again. We might be staying for an extended period in Belgium - but then we'll need to find something to do here... Who knows, we don't need to decide urgently, let's see what time will bring us.
Oh yes, and my fever... It's gone since a couple of days (since we're back, basically!) and my covid19 test returned a negative result! So we'll never know: was it covid19 but with a false negative result, or was it just another virus?...
