GPX - 200 mile round trip based on Chimay - Courtesy of the Wallonia tourist office

Looks like it’s all downhill from now on.

Ha ha,All good until we went green laning and had a bit of a off.Luckily for my wallet just a smashed hand guard and badly scratched bottom crash bar.Mrs wasn't happy she got her bike Jean's dirty:blagblah
 
Bouillon is lovely, Hotel de la Poste in the town centre is superb, and if it is pissing down you can visit the huge Castle up on the Hill.

… Make sure you ride past Vianden Castle and Esch-sur-Sure if getting into Luxembourg, they both also make great places to stop for coffee / lunch.

I'll second that; a group of us head over to the Ardennes as the first trip each year and have stayed at the Hotel de la Poste for the last 5 or so trips. Vianden is also a really pretty town further east (and not too far from the Nürburgring if you're interested in having a go), and there's lots of decent stuff in between.

The N589 that runs between Baileaux and Regniowez is worth a look, but watch out for a tightening right hander heading southbound a couple of km from Baileaux, which one of our number remembers for all the wrong reasons (it also involved a Belgian driver who failed 3 breath tests).
 
Touring in Wallonia

This month's (March) Bike mag has a supplement on riding Wallonia in Belgium, including Spa, the Ardennes, etc
Not an area I'm familiar with but might have to change that ;)
Details, and all the routes, are here


I HAVE MERGED THIS AND ANOTHER WALLONIA THREAD TOGETHER. IT SHOULD ALL MAKE FOR A GREAT HOLIDAY.

Richard
 
Touring in Wallonia

Thank you.

Instant holidays, what’s not to like?

5fc313404961be6a7bfa38470e52c54e.jpg


I am very familiar with the area, it being only a short hop from London via the Chunnel and Calais. It’s a bit more of a hop from Kildare. I’ll be off there with Mr & Mrs ChasMill at Easter.

The routes download well, as does the PDF of words.

One tip: Download the routes and PDF now as websites have a habit of being closed or not being maintained.

PS The car jaunts look OK, too.

PPS If anyone is in Trois Ponts, not that far from Spa race track, I can definitely recommend the chips and mayo’ here, where I stopped last November:

65f07f38875c91e278b64c6c7f02badf.jpg

fb9d5ceb0edf53039208d0674501b67b.jpg

7cbd944cd8d3d84024e3240eeff78fb4.jpg


Friterie Bertrand
+32 80 68 49 27
https://goo.gl/maps/eK3oGpjgSUBodAdH8
 
I'm looking forward to a couple of nights in Dinant on the way home from Germany in May. Not sure how much riding we will do in Wallonia this time as our "spare" day might be sightseeing in Dinant itself, and necking some of the excellent ale, of course.
 
Cheers. Looking for suggestions for May although stayed in Bouillon before.
 
Cyclists will know that some of the toughest, most gritty one day races are held in this region every spring.

If you think Belgium's flat, go and treat yourself.

Those frites DO look good though, don't they?
 
I have put all five of the routes into BaseCamp, Pocket Earth Pro and MyRoute. They all download really well. I’d suggest that anyone could use them near enough as is or, better still, fine tune them to suit THEIR holiday plans.
 
Following some links on the Wallonia tourist office’s website, I sent away for some of their free printed literature. These arrived almost by return post; great service.

Two publications in particular might interest some here, which is an easy to follow summary of:

A. The German invasion of Belgium in 1940

B. The Battle of the Ardennes 1944

Got a link, mate?….

https://walloniabelgiumtourism.co.u...r-brochure?brochure=45677&nid=45677&lng=en-gb

Got a picture, mate?…..

3a74415ead1edb7a3181777e7f4c3408.png





A while ago I had a go at cutting the entire Ardennes battleground into BaseCamp. It was a crazy task which I never completed. The much smaller publication will make the job much easier. Watch this space…..
 
I posted this Wallonia information in another place and someone asked a question about the GPX file. It seems the files are saved as tracks. No problem if you import them to Basecamp as a simple mouse click will convert the track to a route. Some other utilities might not have this function. I also saved the GPX track to my SD card in a Zumo 390. It seems the Zumo does not recognise the track as a route either so the Zumo would not import the GPX file into the trip planner.
 
Wessie, thank you.

It is very possible that the routes are indeed tracks. I simply pumped them into Pocket Earth, which makes an instant conversion *, sometimes more reliably than BaseCamp or a Garmin device itself. I did this for no other reason than to see if the GPX files downloaded at all and if I could then bounce them into Garmin’s Drive and BMW’s Connect app’s. Some websites’ downloads of GPX files can be awfully flakey. For example, I can’t see (on my iPad at least) how to get ADAC’s website’s GPX routes to physically download. I can see them displayed on the ADAC website but to download them to my iPad to then upload them into say, Pocket Earth or some other application, seems to be beyond my iPad (or ADAC) to manage.

I guess yiu can ask your Zumo to convert the track into a route, which will then go straight into Trip Planner?



* Thinking about it, it’s probably not a ‘conversion’ at all. Pocket Earth is simply just displaying the track.
 
Thanks for posting this up I'm off to Antwerp Tomorrow, after reading this I think I'll take the long way back to Calais possibly via Dinant

Thank you.
 
Visit Wallonia

Just had a few brochures from the Belgium tourist board available online as well they even sent it , Dear biker, they want your business lots of battle of the Ardennes stuff
It may be up your Strasse!
508b924e6f801db3afd66498cc592d20.jpg

19d178a319da294f6cdaa51862d7d99a.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Indeed, they do want ‘bikers’ business.

Given that lots of regions, towns and even hotels around Europe are dropping any reference to motorbikes, favouring instead the joys of ‘Green’ alternatives, the Belgian Ardennes is an exception to the rule. Enjoy it while you can but don’t take the piss, or they will clamp down.
 


Back
Top Bottom