Easter Trip to Schelde

[XcelleraThor]

I always wanted to do this, take a motorcycle to where the family, used to spend some of the vacations at the coast, when my kids were small.
To this Dutch-Belgian region only motorways with strictly enforced speedlimits lead, so I chose to take country roads instead (apart from the area around Antwerp). Given those boring roads (any turns?), it would take 100% guaranteed grade-A weather (veeeery sunny and not too hot), along with immaculately blue skies for me to be convinced to go there this way. The weather forcast for easter seemed perfect!

A stop north of Nijmegen proved me right.
The next day riding around the coast and along the „panorama part“ of it was great! Here a view of the road along a dike from a light house next to it.

I’ll have this printed on canvas and framed to hang in the office for bad days there:

On my way back, I actually meant to literally go through Antwerp. There are ways (one bridge and one tunnel) on which you can cross the Rhein / Waal river and trying to get to the non-motorway one, my navigation kept directing me through zones marked with these signs, from which I turned away:

Now is this a mutated motorcycle or perhaps maybe some kind of interpretation of a quad? After a frustrating hour of what seemed driving around in circles, the Queen and I decided to show Antwerp our collective „Deriere“ and head out of town, in the same direction, that we had rode in on, heading towards a motorway around Antwerp.

[XcelleraThor]

It turned out later this week, after speaking to a belgian collegue, wide-spread areas of Antwerp are banned for quads.
The old town hall located in Kaprijke, dating back 1662, was a much better setting for a picture:

Passing though Vrasene I enountered my first H2 SX in „the wild“ piloted by somebody else. What a grand sight!. Very memorable. A turn thereafter I came across this impressive house:

My way back along slow country roads rewarded me with this incredible round-about:

Needless to say I went around it five times with my nose pointed upwards. One of those legendary starfighters F 104 of which was said, to get one, you only needed to own a plot of land in the vicinity of an airbase, because they crashed so often.

This travel report was brought to you by another beverage proudly clad in green ;-)

[Burmashave]

Good travelogue!

...my navigation kept directing me through zones marked with these signs, from which I turned away:

Since picture signs don't have text, I choose to interpret them as I wish. For example in the US, when approaching curves there's sometimes a sign with the outline of a truck tilting on 2 wheels. I choose to interpret that to mean there's a curve ahead, and if you go fast enough, you can get your car up on 2 wheels. Also, in the country, we have signs with a dude with a hat on a tractor, which I choose to mean that it's good to wear a hat when driving a tractor.

[Burmashave]

Needless to say I went around it five times with my nose pointed upwards. One of those legendary starfighters F 104 of which was said, to get one, you only needed to own a plot of land in the vicinity of an airbase, because they crashed so often.

The 104 is an early 60's vintage. In the US, it was known as the missile with a man on it. From what I hear, in Germany they were known as the tent peg.

Hollywood produced a truly horrible movie called "Star Fighters" about the fighter. The Mystery Science Theater crew riffed on it for one of their episodes in the mid 90's. You can watch it on Youtube. The truly horribleness of the movie combined with the riffing are hilarious.