Hike #8: Dijlepad

When: last Saturday
Distance: 7 km
Time: 1.5 hours
With: my husband

The flu hit our house pretty hard in February, so it had been a while since I'd been out for a hike.  But last weekend, just in time for my middle son's 18th birthday, spring suddenly arrived here, and we had to take advantage of it.  So my husband and I headed for the Dijlepad, a path that runs along the Dijle river between Leuven and Oud-Heverlee.  I've done this path with Ingrid but it was a first for my husband.

You could actually take a train to Oud-Heverlee station and then walk the full path back to the center of Leuven, which would make a total of 9 kilometers.  We just did a small out and back starting from the engineering campus of the university.

This is kind of interesting: we wandered by a small creek that was full of watercress (see above)!  It looked like someone had actually facilitated the watercress growing there, as the creek was carefully cleared of leaves and branches, unlike other sections we passed.  It was tempting to think about all the nice soups and salads you could make with that watercress!

 Here are some non-watercress parts of that creek...

...and some more of the path through the wooded area...

 The bulk of the path goes through a low-lying area along the river.  There was a group of swans resting on the fields; I wanted to get a picture but they flew away before we got close enough:

All in all, a good outing.  Looking forward to getting back in the swing of things now that the weather is starting to improve.  Oh, and here's a birthday picture (it was even nice enough to sit outside for lunch!):

Me, Gillis and his girlfriend, Liesbeth

Hike # 7

When: last Sunday (only getting around to posting it now!)
Time: 1:18:07
Distance: 6.36 km
Route: cemetary-north fields-Platte-Lo
With: my husband

Good Sunday morning walk after a late night with friends who came over for dinner...  I was looking for some signs of spring and found some crocuses and my first daffodil of the season!

Well-fed chickens

This is the right time of year for crocuses

He seemed happy to be out grazing

A view of our city from afar

The first daffodil of the year!

Hike #6

Time: 1 hour 22 min
Distance: 6.9 km
Route: Leuven station to lake to Vlierbeek Abbey to home
With: my husband

Cold and blustery but dry!  The sun tried to come out but it was mostly gray.  I looked for crocuses to photograph but only found some urban art on the path along the old train tracks:

Welcome to Cockroach Town? Really? Hmmm

 We made it out to the lake where the path joins up on a Grande Randonnée footpath (the white and red striped mark on the pole indicates a GR path, which is a long distance walking route you can take all over Europe...a lot of the paths we  hike join up with GR paths):

The path goes around the famous lake I used to run loops around for half marathon training and which was frozen and gray looking today:

And then finally, we saw Vlierbeek Abbey in the distance.  We contemplated stopping at the little cafe there for a coffee but we were afraid if we stopped walking and got all warmed up, it would be hard to do the last 2 kilometers in the cold, so we kept on going.

At home, I got a big pot of pasta e fagioli going on the stove...mmmm.  Tasted good after a winter's walk.

Hike #5

It was raining, sleeting and snowing pretty much all day today but that didn't stop us for our usual Sunday walk.  Getting a bit monotonous with the same route all the time but with such crappy weather, I was glad to get out at all.  Brrr!
Time: 45 min
Distance: 4 km
Route: to the cemetary and back
With: my husband

Hike #4

It was bright and sunny this afternoon so I took a walk with the birthday boy, my oldest son who turns 20 today and is busy studying for his last exam tomorrow, poor guy!

Time: 50 minutes

Distance: 4 km

Here we are together about a month ago (no snow today but we didn't have a camera with us):

Weekly 5K #2

                                     

Man, it is cold today.  Too cold, it seemed to me, to bike to the gym, but strangely enough, bundling up for a quick run seemed much more appealing to me this morning.  So off I went, and quickly warmed up!  I think I will feel warmer for the rest of the day.

And as you can see, I improved my time by one minute over last week - ha ha!

Have a great weekend!

Hike #3

Hike #3
Time: 2 hours
Distance: 8 km
With: Ingrid
Start: the church in Testelt

Ingrid and I were so lucky with the weather yesterday!  After a week of storm winds and rain, our planned walking day turned out to be beautiful and sunny - albeit cold, with temperatures around freezing.  We got started at the little church in Testelt, built of the local red sandstone.

From the church, our route took us right up the Voortberg, to where we had a view of the village from above (that's the same church in the distance).

Up on top of the Voortberg, with the sun shining and everything looking bright green, it almost felt like spring.

Another steep ascent on our route took us up to the Weefberg, near Averbode.  A sign on the other side of this hill told us that in 1943, an American B-17 bomber, "Patches", was shot down by the Germans and crashed there, causing a huge crater to be formed.

This lake was not part of the crater, but we loved how the trees were reflected in the water:

After this we had one more smallish hill to ascend, the Rodeberg, before returning to Testelt and a hot cup of tea to warm us up.  It was a good winter's walk.