| Summary | None |
| Owner | Matthew Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2010-08-24 13:54:29 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Leg 7: Aachen, Germany to somewhere in rural Belgium
Including Vaalserberg - Highest point in the Netherlands 25 miles LINKS: Our Country High Points Page Our Adventures Page The prospect of climbing the highest point in the Netherlands doesn’t exactly strike fear into too many people. Much of the country is below sea level and if you’ve just visited Amsterdam you might not expect the high point to be taller than a windmill. Surprisingly, though, Vaalserberg is actually 1000ft tall and actually seems like a mountain. The key is in the curvy Dutch border. A tiny portion of the southern border stretches out so that it can just barely capture Vaalserberg, whose summit is the farthest point in the country from Amsterdam. To get there we had taken an all day train from Horsens, Denmark to Aachen, Germany. It had been a tough journey, especially because we couldn’t quite get the “ach” part of Aachen just right. We discovered that you’ve got to have an awful lot of saliva on your tongue in order to pronounce “Aachen” properly enough so that German people know what you’re talking about. But we made it to town just after sunset and immediately struck out for Vaalserberg, which the GPS indicated was a mere four miles out of town. The plan was to ride to Luxembourg where we would pick up another train. We would ride over the high points in Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg along the way. Conveniently, the way the country borders and the high point locations worked out, the three high points were collinear and almost as close as physically possible to each other. We should easily be able to hit all three in one day because they were only about 50 miles apart. And none required hiking—you could bike right over the top of all three of them. We had programmed into the GPS their coordinates which we obtained from Wikipedia. We headed west from Aachen to the Dutch border. It turns out that Vaalserberg is situated at the Germany/Belgium/Netherlands tri-country border, so you could get a three-for-one deal in terms of countries per mountain. It was a little creepy riding through town late at night but nobody gave us any trouble. Crossing the Dutch border was no more difficult than walking into your kitchen. Then the climb began. And it was steep. “The Netherlands are going to make us earn this one,” I told Eric. We got closer to the top and I said to Eric, “now wouldn’t it be awesome to camp *on* the Belgium/Netherlands border? How often do you get a chance to do that?” So we slowed up and looked for a campsite. Unfortunately the border itself was a little gravel road so it might have been a little too conspicuous to camp in the middle of the road. We found an area with gigantic prehistoric ferns about 78 feet into Belgium and called it good enough. Over the whole trip people had been amazed when we told them that we were “stealth” camping every night. Every single one of the other cyclists we spoke with said they were staying in hostels or campgrounds every night. They had warned us that it would be impossible to stealth camp farther down in Europe because there are so many more people. But this place seemed stealthy enough to us, so we duct-taped some ferns to the tent for a little extra camouflage and rested peacefully. We broke down camp quickly in the morning and decided to eat on the “summit.” It turns we had camped just a quarter-mile from the top. When we reached the crest of the mountain we were greeted by a ridiculous amount of tourist fluff. Since it is situated on the tri-country border, each country has its own little tourist building. Belgium built a giant 10-story observation tower, Netherlands has a big outdoor restaurant and a bar, and Germany has a bunch of other touristy buildings. And they’re all situated a hundred feet from each other, making it a sprawling tourist trap. It was early in the morning so we ate our breakfast at one of the outdoor tables in peace. All kinds of cyclists began to show up. We took our requisite jumping and juggling pictures and collected a few rocks from the summit. Then we took off down the mountain into Belgium and all the signs immediately became French. We blindly followed the GPS through narrow village roads. Quick left, then quick right, then watch out for the cobblestones, then watch out because there’s another car coming and the road is too narrow, then be careful because someone’s front door opens into the street. It was a little more thrilling than passively biking through the wheatfields of Denmark. It had been our easiest high point so far. We hoped that the highest point in Belgium, le Signal de Botrange, would also be a cakewalk. |