This is the first big day – you can find the route here. A total of 150 kilometers but it is almost flat. Most of the way was along waterways or on cycling paths. In general, the route at very limited biking in the road, and we did not get into any dangerouse sitautions with cars.
In more details, we started at the airport hotel (Holiday-In Brussels Airport) – and due to our lack of experience using the Garmin Edge, we decided to “navigate to start” rather that “navigate to route” – therefor we had to get back to the airport before starting out journey west.
We decided to go for a long first effort, biking all the way to Ghent which was apporx 70km. Due to the low tire pressure, as mentioned in “Day 0”, I got a puncture quite early. Further, we had a masive head wind combined with heavy bikepacks our average speed went very low. We were expecting to use about two hours from the airport to Ghent – but we used closer to three hours effective biking – and four hours including repair stops and water/food harvesting in a huge Belgian supermarket.
In Ghent we have coffee and pastery at the Bidon Coffee and later biked to the city hall – before we found a bike repair shop where we got a refill of air and got up to our desired tire presure – that was probably the single smartest action we took that day as our average speed increased significatnly.
After leaving Ghent, we headed for Brugges along cycling paths and a channel – in constant headwind. When reaching Ghent we did a short sightseeing before sitting down for an early dinner.
From Ghent to Blankenberge it was only 15 km, so this was a short ride after pizzas – and we checked in at the hotel around 19.30. It was a long day at the saddle. Effective moving time of 6 hrs 50 min… That was a long first day!
