East Vlaanderen - part 1

Park Valkenburg, Breda

Got the train to Breda, and here I am in the wonderful Park Valkenburg. Quite a bit of low-key activity: cyclists on the paths between the stately oaks, groups of youngsters picnicking on the grass, old folks strolling, delinquents getting high in front of the fountain. Valkenburg has not only ducks, pigeons and swans but chickens too. One fine orange-capped specimen squawked thunderously at a scrawny interloper. It was so loud it drew the attention of passersby. The church bell chimes 7. It's blissful and I'm glad to be here.


(original date of this entry: Aug 18, 2018)
Lyvonne (formerly Yvonne) isn't here; she went to France for an indefinite period. But she offered her flat. So I'm spending the night in Breda, then heading for Belgium in the morning. Destination: Hoogstraten, which isn't far. After dropping off my stuff at Lyvonne's, I went back to the park, on the way noticing a sign for a bike shop called Appie's. It's a simple shop run by Moroccan brothers. They fixed the issue of the rear rack attachment, replaced the batteries on my rear light. After a maintenance check (faulty right handgrip replaced at my local bike shop in Amsterdam) and a blowout repaired (at Amsterdam Central Station), I am now ready to roll through Belgium in style.

Sint Annabos

(Aug 19)

The plan is to go to Hoogstraten in Belgium, not far from the border. Rather than heading straight for the border at Meersel-Dreef, I'm taking an eastern loop in the Netherlands, since Hoogstraten doesn't appear to be far from the border. To get to this point from Breda, I took the usual route to Ginneken, the southern district, where today a big flea market was happening, then the Mark valley south, where people were setting up their easels for the plein-air event—all the poets, Buddhists and crackpots. At Ulvenhout, rather than continue south as I usually do (through the Mastbos), I turned east toward kp 36-84 (LF-13a). The plan is to loop around at kp 59, then cut through the Strijbeeksche Heide.

Chaamse Bos, east of Breda

Though it was forecast to be quite warm today, it is actually overcast, breezy and cool, rather humid. The sun is peeking through at this moment, southeast of Breda at the threshold to the Sint-Annabos, which is the start of an uninterrupted stretch of forest all the way to Alphen via the LF-13a ('a' in this case is east). Del Rey and I took this route in the reverse direction from Tilburg. Today I'm alone.

The Sint-Annabos, which I now enter, "dates from the 16th-17th century and has a large variety of needle and leaf trees," whereas the Boswachterij, Ulvenhout-Chaam, is a younger forest of oak and beech. I should also a bit of the Prinsenbos, which consists mostly of evergreens. As I recall from the Mastbos, there are a lot of chopped trees in stacks. Pruning the forest, I guess.

kp 59 ➢ 60 ➢ 49 ➢ 47 ➢ 93

Vinyl Outlet, Chaam

The skies have cleared and now it's as warm as predicted though it remains hazy and muggy. From the new pines of the Chaamse Bos, I left the LF-13 and headed into Chaam, which seemed not at all quaint. I did, however, run into an interesting record shop with loads of LPs and 45s, run by Eric, who brought me coffee. He also had a nice selection of old turntables, and I bought a Dual for €50, which he's going to mail me.

The route through Chaam is just a busy road, but on the west edge there's a turn to the south (➢ kp 93), a rural bit with cornfields and plenty of fietsers—and now a sort of caravan of young white people on scooters.

kp 92 ➢ 44 ➢ 91 ➢ 43
This is an area of heath, now in purple bloom, and according to the map, a few scattered lakes though I haven't seen any. Very peaceful. I took a brief detour toward kp 40, a dirt trail through the woods, and found a nice picnic spot.

Borderline

From Meersel-Dreef, I took the east side of the Hoogstraten tour from my Around Antwerp cycle tour guidebook, seeing the patches of forest on the map. But in fact it was nothing but cornfields and dull communities, all deserted. I thus missed a supposedly splendid stretch of the Mark. I was, literally, "off the Mark." Mine was also the longer route and a punishing first-day jaunt.

The one bright point was my vriendin op de fiets in Hoogstraten, Greet Voet, all by herself in a big Le Corbusier-influenced home that she and her ex-husband built. She was having the facade redone and the small rectangular swimming pool in back rebuilt. The place was in some disarray, and my little room upstairs had a piece of plastic covering the window which rustled with the wind.

On the Mark

Greet bears a striking resemblance to the actress Jeanne Moreau. I almost mentioned it to her. After I took my rain shower, unable to reduce the water temperature below scalding, I went down the spiral staircase to find Greet at her Mac. She was going to suggest someplace to eat—there were many places along the main drag—then said she could make me dinner, to which I immediately assented.

Turns out Greet is a pianist, in both classical and jazz styles, a singer in a choir, and a music teacher at the local school for the past 35 years. So this lovely woman breathes music and we had plenty to talk about on that score. She has a daughter in Utrecht. She went through a painful divorce three years ago after being married to her husband, also a pianist, for the past three decades. Continued...