Liege-Bastogne-Liege
The Dili way
The last 2 months, Linda's cycling was mainly on a hometrainer as part of her revalidation for torn ligaments. While the cycling goes already very well, there is still some uneasiness when she needs to abruptly stop as the right leg is not very stable yet.
Our first short cycle trip should be a short one of a few days only, preferably with the eBike and on paved roads.
In Dirk's "planned trips", we still had a gps track of a Liege-Bastogne-Liege ride and this seemed a good idea.
Around 250 km's and while it has a lot of climbs, that would not be an issue with our eBikes.
On the official LBL website, we found a picture of the new 2022 route and we created our own GPS track alike.
(click on the track to download the 2022 route from wikiloc)
LBL 2022
Our route
Was this a good idea? NO - CERTAINLY NOT.
We just did not realise that on race day, all these routes are free of traffic. While the first km's were still on a nice cycle way next to the river Meuse, the situation quickly became horrific as noisy trucks, busses and cars were passing at full speed and were pushing us aside.
We first thought that this would change after awhile when further from Liege but this did not really happen.
On day 1, around lunch time, we decided to change plans and to divert as much as possible to remote cycle ways.
We would still do our version of Liege-Bastogne-Liege but now in "holiday mode". All these cycle ways are on the app "Pocket Earth" so no real advance planning or routing was required.
(click on the track to download)
The revised route was about 300 km's which we did in 4 leisurely sunny days. As usual, we did not book any hotels beforehand.
If we would do this tour again, we would also skip the part of the original 2022 route which we did the first half day.
The revised route is already prepared. In total 300 KM's with just 12 km's overlapping between Liege and Esneux
(Click on the track to download)
Proposed route
Video on DILISTUFF YouTube channel
Tips
Normally, we would travel to Liege by train but as it's still difficult for Linda to take the bicycle on and off the train, we went by car. For the night before we started our trip, we booked a room in the Campanile hotel, just 5 km's outside the center of Liege, We were allowed to leave our car for free on their parking for the period of the trip. There is also a cycle path from the hotel to the start of the route (see the return route on the GPS track of our trip)
On the 3rd day, we had the intention to stay overnight in Malmedy. As we were already there around 3PM, we decided to continue to Spa as there was a bigger choice of hotels to select from. This went like a breeze as the route between Malmedy and Spa is on an old railway track and all downhill.
The Wagon Leo Hotel in Bastogne is worth a stay. We had dinner in their brasserie which is a transformed train wagon.
