A planned ride this morning had be be cancelled due to the forecast rain. And indeed, the rain came, about one hour of it, stopping around noon. In the afternoon I watched the Liege Bastogne Liege classic and after that , looking out of the window again, things seemed to brighten up a bit. So I decided to ride out and do a ride in Meerdael forest. I opted for a perimeter ride, staying on trails and tracks as close as possible to the edge of the forest. I also wanted to check out the Dikke Eik situation again. I had some trouble believing that the tall tree sticking out was really an aspen tree, so I decided to try and make my way up to it and check for myself. So I rode into the fields, got a bearing and entered the forest on a line leading me straight to the tree. And what a tree it was, or rather, trees. Because there were 2 big ones. One was the tall tree I had seen standing from a distance and the other, its brother no doubt, was standing 10 to 15 metres from it. This tree has been struck by lightning years ago, and cut in half. The lower part was still standing and looked alive as well, but its top section was lying sprawled at its feet, overgrown with mosses .

At the moment I'm having serious problems with my home PC. So if updates are a big sketchy in the next couple of days, please bear with me. In the worst case I will have to re-install Windows. Maybe I can get another PC connected to the internet, but the problem with that PC is that it doesn't have any USB connection... so no GPS or picture updates.
Anyways, the ride was fine, the area around the Dikke Eik was green, lush and dark , to the point of being mildly scary. I rode on to complete the loop around Meerdael Forest before returning home, just in time before the next rain set in.

Ride stats : 30.5K and 355 heightmeters in 1h40mins

3083/ 27290