Big Bad Log

Yesterday evening a northerly wind blew away most of the fine dust and during the night the temperatures dropped to -8 degrees C and the wind settled to leave us with a frozen solid misty landscape. I left around noon and the temperature still was -4 degrees C. I wanted to do the Overijse Bloso's today so I rode along the Meerdael Blue route to make the interconnection with the Overijse Red in Sint Agatha Rode. I stopped a lot to take advantage of the special conditions to make some - hopefully - beautiful pictures. Even though it was cold the temperature didn't feel too bad. Possibly due to the lack of wind. But every time the fog got thicker it also got colder. When I joined the route I immediately went for an extra loop into the Sint Agatha Rode forest. This was very beautiful with the fog leaving the trees, grass and everything else covered in spike-like frosty bits. Check the pictures to understand what I mean.

A tricky descent later and I was back onto the track which I now followed towards Terlanen. Sometimes the trails were covered with fine powdersnow, sometimes they were very icy. Especially on one downhill leading into Huldenberg, a narrow hollow tarmac road coming out of the fields and passing by a few houses. All of a sudden the whole road was covered with ice.. iieeek.. don't hit the brakes, don't steer, oops, there is a corner - yiehaaa... you get the picture. Hair raising stuff. I was lucky the road was abandoned because I honestly wouldn't have known what to do if there was a car or something else coming up in the opposite direction. I guess my only option would have been to bail out on one of the sides of the road. After this commotion I was glad I could sit down for one of the steepest uphills - a narrow singletrack leading up to a track between the fields overlooking Huldenberg. No, I didn't ride it. It was steep, gully and today covered with fine snow which had my rear tyre spinning too much to hold traction. I made some pictures of the icing on the barbed wire and moved on. Into Overijse another steep descent, luckily this one was on soil, but it remained tricky. In these kind of conditions you don't want to have a flat tyre or - even worse - fall off your bike. SO I took it easy. There were some skaters on the Overijse ponds and I rode on towards Tombeek and Ottenburg. The steps downhill in Ottenburg was very tricky, the mist seemed to drop down , covering the track with what looked like snow but it felt more like ice. Very carefully controlling my speed and pointing my front wheel in the direction that seemed the safest to me, I completed the downhill unscathed. Warming up during the next uphill and then the great hollow road leading down into Eerken. I was nearly back where I had joined the track some 34K ago and I had had a great ride. When I rode back into the Meerdael forest I met my friend Roger who was also doing a short ride. He took a picture of me at the pond near the Kluis. This one was also frozen solid but we could hear the ice cracking when a few people ventured on it. Roger told me he had been skating in Holland a few times this week. I asked him about the Elfstedentocht but he believed it wouldn't take place since it wasn't freezing hard enough around Leewarden. It seemed to be colder here in Belgium than further up north in Friesland.. Giet et oan? It doesn't look so but keep an eye over here to be certain.

Ride Stats : 55K and 700/708 heightmeters (Polar/Garmin) in 2h58mins

77/730