Beesel and back

So I almost forgot to write today, which means I am much too lazy to add photos as well (but I will add them later)

I decided to try my luck at biking following the bike routes that they have all over Limburg (and I am guessing the whole of the Netherlands). I woke up pretty late (NOT helping me adjust to waking up early for work :( ) And I knew it was seriously cold outside, but it was also not raining. So I needed to gamble, if I waited too long, waiting for it to warm up, I would probably get caught in the rain. I knew that I wanted to spend a good few hours outside. So in the end, I headed out around 11, which was probably a little later then ideal.

I decided to bike south along the river, Maas. On Friday I had biked a bit north, so I thought I would try my luck going south. I hugged the river as best I could for most of the way there. It's very cute, there are a few small, older towns along the river. They all have almost identical profiles on the horizon, with a large church tower. Also which is very cute, there are little ferries that go across the river once in a while. Perhaps next time I will try biking for a bit on the East side of the River. I followed the bike paths most of the way, and that was quite cute, because they bring you sort of along "back roads" many of them just dirt farm roads. But there was a really nice section through a bunch of orchards. It was about then that it started to rain.

But I was prepared for rain, so I wasn't too bothered. I continued on my route. Around Beesel was where I got good and lost, well not so lost, I pretty much always knew where I was, I just didn't know the direction I was going, so it took me a bit to get right and turned around back toward Venlo (I had even made it to the next town without trying, and further from Venlo!). Since it had been raining for a while, there was a good deal of water around. So for the way back I decide to opt out of the dirt paths. This also was a bit harder to navigate, because since I wasn't following a specific bike route, I was mostly following automobile signs. And I needed to be careful not to be guided in the wrong direction to the highway (which isn't really the most km efficient way back). But I did discover the main road that took me the (shorter) 15km home.

So all in all, I was out from 11-3, with a few brief stops for water and fruit, when I got home I was quite damp, so I enjoyed a large bowl of tomato vegetable soup to warm me up!