Haacht - Jan Primus route

This morning, Wednesday 10/03/2021, we left as usual at 09:00 with seven cyclists from Houtemveld for a cycling trip to Haacht.

Because I wanted to be back home around 16:00, I shortened the classic route to Haacht to just under 80 km.

And this worked out well because I was back home at 15:42, just before the scheduled time.

With a GPS, it is relatively easy to continuously keep an eye on the pre-planned schedule.

Despite the sufficiently high temperatures, around 10°C at noon, the biting wind made it feel colder than it actually was.

And I felt the cutting wind quite intensely at times because I wasn't wearing my fleece jacket today.

Nevertheless, everything went very smoothly without any significant problems along the way.

In the coldest months of the year, I am usually on the road with seasoned cyclists who are all intrinsically better cyclists than I am.

And that's actually how I prefer it.

After a short first break near the castle of Horst, we were already at our destination, the market square of Haacht, around noon.

After a picnic lunch, well protected from the wind against the south wall of the St. Remigius Church of Haacht, I was finally able to take a group photo after much fussing.

The return journey with the wind at our backs went smoothly, and around 14:45, about halfway up the climb of Pellenberg, we made our last short stop.

This was to give some participants the chance to obtain a full indulgence.

The last 12 km of the bike ride over very familiar terrain was a breeze.

And as planned, we were back in Tienen very early today, so that most people still had plenty of time to get home before the forecasted rain.

On our trip to Haacht, we were able to add 78.5 km to our cycling activity.

To get the job done, we spent 5h02 on our bikes and achieved an average speed of 15.6 km/h.

We cycled in the first quarter around Tienen, where it is a bit hillier.

Thus, we managed to gain 488.7 meters of altitude, despite the fact that about a third of the course (along the Demer and the Dijle) was completely flat.

Especially the first and last third of this bike ride were tough with a few unavoidable challenging climbs.