Last weekend brought us more nice weather. Not quite as nice as beautifully sunny Saturday the weekend before, but nice enough for me to saddle up and go for a long ride. I’m still easing back into the season, workout out the aches and pains that develop every time I go from sitting around doing nothing to riding again. So I picked a loop that’s not terribly long, but discovered that it was a loop I had originally designed to get in as much climbing as possible.

In fact, it turned out that the ride had about 620 m (2050 ft) of climbing, much of it very steep. That might not sound like a huge amount, but remember, this is Belgium, one of the flattest countries on earth. So that’s a lot of climbing.

Climbing or not, it was a nice loop, mostly quiet roads in forest and farmland, a few small villages. It passes through the Forêt de Soignes, Hoeilaart, La Hulpe, Lasne, Rixensart, and back into town. There’s a map of it right here.

Sunday brought warmer, but wetter weather, and I rode around just to the south of Brussels in the rain, watching a huge number of mountain bikers struggle through some kind of tour of the towns down there. It looked fun actually, and if I had been on my ‘cross bike I might have even tried to join them. But I was on my road bike, getting wetter and wetter, and instead headed home. In the afternoon we had lunch with at the fantastic La Maison des Crêpes and went to see Slumdog Millionaire, which we had been trying to see for many months. It was challenging, since much of the movie is in Hindi, subtitled in French and Dutch. So I got some good French practice.

Next week kicks off the spring classics season here, with the newly renamed Omloop Het Volk (now as Omloop Het Nieuwsblad) on Saturday and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne on Sunday. Both races pass through Zegelsem, one of the prettier places we’ve been to here in Belgium and site of one of my favorite ‘cross races as well. I might try to ride over to Ninove and catch the race as it passes through on Sunday if the weather’s good.

Saturday also offers the Balloon Parade kicking off the Tourist Year of the Comic Strip or something or other. So we’ll probably have to try to make it to that as well. Stay tuned…