Stopping to capture this building with my Samsung Galaxy S2 and then I rode onwards to the Marollen Chapel. Here I took a left and crossing the Waversesteenweg I reached Hoksem where I stopped again to take a picture of its two-pronged church.

The pictures where taken through the Vignette for Android application and some post-preocessing filtering was done making them a little more gloomy and vignetted. From now the wind was blowing against me but at least the drizzle had stopped so I could concentrate on riding back to Meldert along some smaller trails. From Meldert I rode to Willebringen and then into Neervelp and onwards to Bremt, Bierbeek and Haasrode. In all a very nice distance and my legs felt better than yesterday. My average heartrate was also 12 bpm lower than yesterday which could be due to the lesser wind.

Endomondo track


Ride Stats : 61K and 515 heightmeters (Garmin) in 2h50mins

1321/12490

Today saw me on the Litespeed Obed for a quick ride into Mollendaal Forest. I came upon the forester at the start of my ride and we exchanged a few words about where to ride; where not to ride; forest exploitation and the effect it has on the forest trails. He says it is OK to ride on all the roads that are on the map and are not forbidden by signage . I am sure I have a different map of the forest than he has. He is not counting singletrails I'm sure. I told him there were a lot of blocked smaller roads and he said they would look into it once the regular forest exploitation comes to an end.
I did my longer Mollendaal loop and the dusk was falling upon me near the end of the last stretch. I decided to ride past Bremberg and return on the roads where there was at least light enough to see where I was going. I hadn't counted on needing a light but darkness was upon me rather quickly today, and with the moon being new there was no light to guide me.
The trails were moist , and wet at the sunny side of the forest where the ground looked like it was more saturated. At one time I had to really push hard on the pedals to get through some kind of bog that had formed on a trail. It might need a couple of days more to dry out before the wetter tracks would be at their best. But most tracks were quite fine even today. I suffered a bit near the end of my ride but that had mostly to do with the fact that I simply did not see where the dry spots were.

Endomondo track


Ride Stats : 26K and 345 heightmeters (Garmin) in 1h30mins

1174/11205