Foggy Trails

It's a rest day.  Personally, I'm not real into the idea, but it's all part of the "no burn out" (aka. healthy and responsible) plan.  After a particularly exceptional weekend, I would prefer to get out again with the bike and continue to revel in the outdoors of Luxembourg.  But, it's Monday and Monday is rest day.

Anyway.

We had a lot of fun on the hiking and biking trails this weekend so we could earn this rest day.  Like I mentioned last week, hiking trails are crisscrossed all over the country.  You don't have to be near the city or a major town to find one.  If you happen to have the "blue bible", you should be able to find at least one trail near any town.

Just like last weekend, we headed towards Erpeldange, this time via the Victory Hugo trail we discovered.  We went in the opposite direction and then jumped on the #1 hiking trail, clearly marked at every turn with a blue arrow.

It was an up and down 11 miles with several rewarding views.  The best one was from the Goldknapp "peak" which is a lonely hill at 330m that provides a 360 degree view of the river valleys and the towns of Ettelbruck, Ingeldorf, Warken, Diekirch, and Erpeldange.  Unfortunately, the visibility wasn't so great for pictures.  Rain and mist kept things pretty cool and grey.  We did encounter some domesticated animals, all of which weren't too sure what to do about the dog.  The highland cattle we met were particularly disturbed by his presence.

Sheep on the side of Goldknapp

The Highland cattle decided to take the high road after the dog loudly demanded to know
what their deal was.

Not all the cows came in the black and white or furry variety.

Here were some of the views.

Taken from a ridge high above Erpeldange.
Goldknapp is the hill on the left with the antennae and clump of trees.

From where this was taken.
With the poor visibility, the picture really doesn't do it justice. 

We weren't the only ones braving foggy, cool weather.

Even though it wasn't much of a spring-like day, there were some signs it would be back soon.

Yesterday was bitter cold.  Bitter. Cold.  Windy and the temps were below freezing.  It was really tempting to say, oh let's wait until it warms up to the predicted 50 degrees.  Trouble was, as all the cycling fans know, the Tour of Flanders was on that afternoon.  So, we dug out the cold weather gear (and the Cold Avenger mask) and headed out.  The dog stayed home, much to his relief.  We went north, northeast again, but this time only for about 30mi.  There weren't that many people out that early, except one guy all decked out in an old Saxo Bank kit desperately trying to channel his inner Fränk.  Apparently, it wasn't working very well.  When we first met, he was standing next to his bike not doing anything in particular from what I could tell.  As we approached, he spotted us and jumped on his bike and slowly started pedaling.  Right in front of us.  As my mom used to say, if you are going to cut me off, at least try show me why it was necessary.  Now, he was holding us up!  Let me tell you, we weren't going very fast to begin with.  I mean, we're no roadies.  At all.  We breathed a sigh of relief when he left the path for the road at one point and we took the underpass and much to our dismay reunited with our friend on the other side.  He slowed and started following us.  We kept our friendly wheel sucker all the way until we turned around.  Some times he'd hang back, other times we were a trio instead of a duo.  It was a bit exasperating.  He must have been in bad shape to get a tow from the likes of us.  When we followed the path through a trailer park, he jumped on the road again and that was that.  We turned around shortly thereafter and when we did so, happened to notice that there he was, a few hundred meters up the trail leaning on the guardrail.  Waiting for us to pick him up again?  No thanks.

We returned home in plenty of time to clean up, warm up, and whip up some quiche made with home made Belgian waffles.  Then, it was time to kick back and watch the Tour of Flanders.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a Belgian ale to accompany the meal, but all in all it was a perfect afternoon.  What a pleasure for the Belgian fans to see Boonen win, huh?  We're planning on going up to Bastogne in a couple weeks to see Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but watching that race yesterday has me itching to make the journey to Bruges in 2013.