Stannard Tour de Europe

Holland

Roads

What roads? Separate bike paths everywhere, excellent directions and – what is going on? Cars keep giving way to me when I need to cross the road, I can’t cope!

Food

Yum, cheese (Gouda, Edam, we rode past them all…), bread, chocolate sprinkles on toast, appel stroop, stroopwaffles

Weather

Uh oh, another afternoon storm haunts our horizon.

Favourite place

Rotterdam

Belgium

Roads

Crap! Roadworks everywhere – but plenty of (poorly signposted) bike paths and people STILL keep giving way to me

Food

More chocolate, bread, beer, chocolate waffles with icecream in Ghent and special lollies that taste like marshmallow and look like purple jubes

Weather

More afternoon storms, but less lightning

Favourite place

Ghent, followed closely by the Van Eyke Sport cycle shop in Aalst

France

Roads

Ahhhh, smooth as silk (after Belgium…) – fewer bike paths but we stick to the back roads.

Food

Baguettes, camembert (we are in Camembert), hot chocolate, café

Weather

Nope – they don’t have sunshine in France either

Favourite place

Any patisserie/boulangerie, Girondelle

Luxembourg

Roads

Immaculate, and entirely populated by luxury European cars

Food

German ham, still great bread, more chocolate spread

Weather

Crap – worse than Belgian roads. We have our worst day of riding in Luxembourg, a tail wind keeping us under the same rain cloud for the entire day.

Favourite place

Hollenfels (before it started raining)

Germany

Roads

Well, actually we just popped across the border for 5 minutes seeing it was just on the other bank of the river….

Food

…and bought some delicious apricots

Weather

Better than Luxembourg

Favourite place

Any where that is not Luxembourg

Back to France

Roads

Bike paths down the Moselle and a day spent in the cols – yay, real riding.

Food

More baguettes, chocolate with noisettes (hazelnuts), café, summer fruits

Weather

Mixed bag, ending with a couple of sunny days to top up our tans

Favourite place

Colmar