France Tour 2016 - Day 2 - Brugge to Maubeuge

If you haven't read Day 1 of the tour diary, click here to catch up!

Sunday 28th August

Today started very leisurely as we (well, mainly me actually) needed a decent sleep and so we ended up leaving Brugge at around 11am. We started off by heading to Ghent on some relatively boring roads but they needed to be done. There was actually a bit of a breeze today so it was a more manageable mid-20s degree heat.

Quick photo stop on the way to Ghent

Riding by the river is always nice

After arriving in Ghent around 12 o'clock, we had a wander around the town and the food market that was happening before having a leisurely lunch by the river. As we walked around the food market, I was approached by a guy who thought I looked Dutch and said it was really cool that I rode a motorbike which was nice.

A flower market that was on in the city

Relaxing by the food market with a drink

Overlooking the river before heading down to eat

2 and a half hours later, we finally set off from Ghent and headed south towards Mons and the French border. After spotting some old American army trucks, we decided to stop in Mons and had an ice cream in the square whilst listening to the brass band that was playing. 

The square was really busy with pretty much all of the cafes and bars looking rammed but the rest of Mons seemed a bit dead. As we hadn't really got any plans of where to stay this evening, we decided to carry on with our planned route and headed back to the bikes. As we were putting our gear back on at the bikes, two blokes drove past in their car and the passenger felt the need to shout "wow, nice bike!!!" out of the window as they turned into the car park. He then ran over to quickly talk to us as girls on bikes are great.... I've never had anyone really mention the fact I'm a female biker before but today it got mentioned twice by people who seemed to go out of their way to do so. Maybe it's a European thing. 

From Mons, we headed into the beautiful countryside and the national parks on the border between Belgium and France heading towards Roisin which is a tiny little village in the countryside which holds no real interest apart from the fact that Róisín happens to be one of our family members' names and we thought we had to go and have a selfie by the sign!

Selfie!

My one complaint about Belgium, as lovely as it is, has to be the road surface. They seem to be huge fans of concrete roads which make any bumps much harsher than they probably should be and they can make for some loud riding too. I can't fault much else though! 

You could tell when we arrived in France by the change in building style although we were unsure for a while as to whether we'd crossed the border or not because Ath has all of their signs in French but the cars were Belgian and the only flags that were around were the purple, white and yellow ones of Ath.

Eventually we arrived in Maubeuge at around 6:30 and we decided it was easiest to stay in the Campanile there which was basic as expected but had everything we needed. Overall today, we only did about 100 miles but it took us 7 and a half hours to do so!

Parked up at the Campanile

The plan for tomorrow is to head to Reims where we are staying for two nights as it would be rude not to go champagne tasting in the champagne region!

Daily miles: 122;

Total miles done: 400.