Day 14 – 17.5 miles to Eben

Slept OK and was packed and off by 7.10am. The tight boots helped, although definitely issues with the left foot. Will just have to soldier on.

Several events today…

• Not much forest. A nice change.
• The route finally decided to head south after days of going east.
• Crossed back into Holland to go through Maastricht, and then returned to Belgium. Holland is now officially “done”.
• Completed guidebook 2.
• Completed 250 miles.
• Finally had a hill to climb – all 200ft of it.
• Found another GR5 Hero. See later.

The less good news…

• It is going to rain tomorrow.
• Didn’t make a lot of miles today despite the early start. Not sure what happened.

It is getting hillier, which means camping is harder, so you have to take a pitch when you see it. Tonight I stopped at a “museum”. They said I could stop in their carpark, but only after they closed, an hour later. I dumped my stuff and went 15 mins off-route to a bar (as you do!). They were superb. So good I went back to the museum picked my stuff up and carried it to the bar to camp. The bar is the Moulin de Broukay, just south west of Eben. My “GR5 Heroes” page will explain all.

Maastricht today was underwhelming – to be honest it was a bit of a dump.

Bizarrely a good Saturday day out in Maastricht is to visit the quarry. I am not joking. It was heaving! They even have viewing platforms and walkways. Weird.

Carrying on from yesterday (?) about misleading signs. Here is today’s.

The cross means “not this way”, the red and white bars mean “this way”.

You choose which you believe!