Day 21 : Final stretch

While packing, we discussed how much farther it would be to get home. Realistically it would be another 170 km. I didn't feel like cycling anymore because I was exhausted after racing after Bart for three weeks. 

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We bought groceries at the local supermarket, where it was super crowded. All other supermarkets were closed today. We put our stuff on the conveyor at the checkout. The lady took our two apples and dropped one on the floor. She just picked it up and put it in the bag; what a service. Upon leaving someone pressed a pack of milk in our hands, it was free. It seemed like we were the only people accepting it. While we had breakfast, we observed the people handing out the milk. They were three men and a lady, each about 25 years old. They seemed like graduate students or people who had just started their own milk company without ever seeing a cow. They were enthusiastic, but not very smart, standing at the same supermarket with four people. They were also all drinking soda instead of the milk they were trying to advertise. The packages said 'La bande des Fétailt', 'the milk-crazy gang'.

 

In Belgium, there were dedicated cyclist paths everywhere. This seems better than France, where you must cycle on the road. However, the roads in Belgium are so bad that if you brought a pack of milk, you would end up with whipped cream at the end of the day. For 3 hours, we cycled over roads made of concrete slabs which made us bounce up and down every half a second. One cycling path was so bad that I decided to cycle into the roadside during a descent because I was worried my bike would otherwise shake apart.

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[Bart: As a challenge, Bram didn't want to get more money on the last day because he figured we had enough left to survive. He also was too stubborn to bring more than 1.5 liters of water. So in the afternoon, we hardly had any money or water left.] The roads were flat the entire day, and we reached familiar towns by the evening. While eating fries we saw some other cycling-vacation-people passing by, we tried to catch up with them later, but they must have taken a different turn somewhere because we didn't see them again.