The First Day of Riding

We began our ride in Liege, heading up river, with the wind 'to our noses' as described by the captain. This made what looked like a pretty flat path feel very much like an uphill climb, not only to this wobbly legged blogger, but to the fitter members of our company as well. At our morning briefing, when the captain went over the maps (and gave extended history lessons which extended the start of our ride well into late morning) I saw that the boat would be in a lock a ways up stream. This became the carrot, so to speak, and I made it 5 km to the lock and rejoined the boat. I decided that upstream into a headwind was not my idea of fun, and besides, it looked like rain. And it did rain! The others came back soaking wet and exhausted.
Here is our group at the lock where we all ate lunch and I stepped onto the boat. The old man didn't do much riding after this trip either, and barely made it back to the boat. (Yeah, I know, he's only 25 years older than me...)

It was SO nice to be with Peter and Amanda!

There was much to see along the banks of the river. We didn't take pictures of the industrial sites, as they are neither beautiful nor interesting, but there was a lot of industry along the river; old steel mills, cement plants, coal depots and sand and gravel depots supplied by all those river barges.
I think there will be more pictures of this later, but it is a fortification which served as a prison under several different conquerors, including Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler.
This was an imposing castle on a cliff.

Another castle long the bike path, Ed had the camera and got some great shots.



Here is a somewhat typical old building made of brick that is still in use. The laws now say that old buildings may not be destroyed, so old buildings are incorporated into new ones and are  renovated.
We passed many lovely bridges.