Mountainbiking in Érezée

Yesterday it was 20 degrees and sunny. So what to do? Of course… get sweaty and dirty: mountainbiking 🙂     I like mountainbiking a lot. It’s nice a nice work-out, and specially with some height difference it can be a nice challenge. And I need it, because work is not really good for your endurance 😉

Yesterday Frank and me wend biking in Érezée in Belgium. The Belgian Ardennes have lot’s of height differences, which we don’t have in the Netherlands (except for Limburg a bit). So when there is enough time and the weather is OK, I like to go there, and it’s only a two hour drive, so why not. Because mountainbiking in NL is only practising for the real work.

After about 3 kilometres we entered a forest and we saw the sign: no access because of hunting, October 11, 2008. Yes that was yesterday 😦     Frank mentioned: “We can try…. you brought your first aid kit”. And yes I did, but no we don’t… that’s not a risk I am willing to take. Strange how that managing of risks also comes into play when I’m not working…. on the other hand, that’s a major issue in lead climbing, off-piste snowboarding, mountainbiking, canyoning, parasailing, etc. Our mitigation plan: don’t go through the hunting area but try to go around and pick up the route from there.

Routes are marked with this sign:

After a really cool track through the forest, lot’s of mud, sweating up the hills, speeding down, we found our track again… so we thought. And while exciting the forest we saw we were again exiting the hunting area, hmmm….

But… there are a lot of routes in the Ardennes, almost all villages have some, so after some time we found ourselves indeed on a mountainbike route, but from another village. But no problems there, via the normal road we found our way back to the car.

So in the end, we had fun biking and did not get shot, so we live another day.