Thursday 29 May 2014
| Distance (km) | 17 kms | |||
| Distance (time) | 4 hrs | |||
| Climb / Descent | 394m / 332m | |||
| Hard / Soft surface | 20% / 80% | |||
| Landscape |
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| Weather |
 21° 2 Bft
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After yesterday's "Two-bumps-day" went so well we are completely not worried about today. We have to leave Stavelot, a serious climb, walk around at constant altitude and then descend to Vielsalm. How hard can it be?
Today we leave our base camp in Spa and so we have to pack in the morning and pay for the camping site. It was a nice camping for 5 days, but we move on. So we drive to Vielsalm and park the car at the railway st ation from where we catch the train. It only passes once per 2 hours to Trois-Pont: a staggering 9 minutes away! In Trois-Pont we have a lot of time to help some holiday cyclists unloading there bicycles and luggage and then we still have 10 minutes to wait for our bus. About 5 minutes before our bus is supposed to leave a BMW arrives and parks in front of the sign saying that you're not allowed to park at the bus station. A man steps out and enters the shed. A bit of noise follows, the shed opens and hey, a bus. So the shed is in fact the bus hangar and the BMW driver is the bus driver. We get in and continue our way to Stavelot. It's always the question where to step out and when we're sure our stop is next we push the button to request a stop.....one stop too early. Ok, we'll walk from here then into Stavelot to connect to the GR5 in the downtown. The big advantage of our bus mistake is that we now pass a bakery that is open today (it's Ascencion Day) and so we conquer two large brioches before we continue. We cross the river and after the bridge it immediately goes up again. We walk on the left side of the road while racing bikes come down full speed heading into Stavelot. Fortunately we have to turn right next to a house. That house has a rather agressive dog barking at us and when it tries to climb over te fence we decide to speed up to be away as soon as possible. Easier said then done because the climb is seriously steep here and the weather is damp at least. So huffing and puffing we arrive at the tarmac road at the top just to follow this while climbing a bit more. And again we have high speed cyclists more focused on the holes in the road than on other road users. It's good that we have to turn left a bit further on and enter the quiet forest. From here it is not spectacular, but nice and quiet. We pass over tracks, pretty flat and throguh the forest with an occasional few over the valley of the Salm. Slowly but surely there are more walkers on the track while we descend to a small group of houses: Logbiermé. It really is not much more than a few houses, and a picknick table. Always nice to have a sit during lunch but unfortunately a local stinging flies knows that too and he's a stubborn fellow. We managed to get away without being stung and pass on through a sad looking field of freshly cut trees. But it does smell good, fresh wood. We enter the forest again and walk along a wide forest road, slightly undulating. Finally the road turns sharply right and climbs to a large farmhouse: Mont-le-Soie. Nothing to do here, but according to our GR5 guide worth mentioning. The path ends at a narrow tarmac road through the forest that we have to follow a few 100 metres slowly going down. Apart from a big time suffering Dutch family on bicycles going up there is no traffic, which makes walking on tarmac doable. Where the tarmac road turns right we go straight ahead into another forest track and we're back in relax-mode in the forest. The path is still flat for a while before descending. We pass some other hikers while having a good view over Vielsalm. It can't be that far anymore. br> We arrive at the main road just north from the downtown of Vielsalm, close to the supermarkte. The GR5 passes through the downtown but we keep following the main road as we have to go to the railway station. Just before the railway station we pass the 4th "frituur" (snackbar) in Vielsalm that is open and we only consider this a sign: we go for Belgian fries before we drive the car to our new base camp: camping site Hohenbusch in Grüfflingen: the German speaking part of Belgium. There, in the evening, we're caught in what seems to be a short rain shower that after being in the car for an hour is apparently not that short. Ok, then we don't cook tonight....didn't the camping site have a cafeteria? Nothing wrong with a good schnitzel, fries (again!) and half a liter of German beer, right? |
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