WE 02 Tongeren - Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler

2. Ride from Tongeren to Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler. A very hard and hilly ride of 154 km and 2114 m elevation gain with 584 m ascent and 53 m descent.

After 5 km we reach the Walloon region and ride on fairly flat roads towards Visé. At km 18, shortly before Visé, we consecutively cross the Albert Canal and the Meuse. From Visé we follow the valley of the Ruisseau d'Asse. A little further, we pass the Abbey of Val de Dieu and it gradually goes uphill to Aubel.

From Aubel, it is a continuous undulating ride with ups and downs over 30 km. After 38 km, about a kilometer left off the road, you will see the American Cemetery of Henri Chapelle. A very large American cemetery for soldiers who fell during the Battle of the Bulge at the end of World War II.

It continues uphill, we flirt with the German border and after 70 km we reach the highest point of the day at Lammersdorf and the German border: 584 m. We are in the Hohe Venn/Eifel Nature Park and cross the Vennbahn several times, an old railway line that has been converted into a cycle path and mostly runs along the border between Aachen and Troisvierges at the Belgian-Luxembourg border. Via a beautiful descent, we reach the Ruhr and the Ruhr Lake (Upper Lake) after 82 km. Five kilometers later we pass the Vogelsang Domain, which was a training camp for the NSDAP during World War II, later a military training camp for NATO and now a museum.

The rest of the ride leads up and down through the German Eifel mountains with their beautiful nature. In Germany, we first ride for a while through the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and after 139 km we arrive in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

At the end of the ride, we go down to Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler. The municipality is located in the district Rhineland-Palatinate. It is the capital of the district Ahrweiler. The town has about 29,000 inhabitants and consists of two cores: the fashionable spa town of Bad Neuenahr and west of it the medieval city wall of Ahrweiler. Both places are located along the Ahr, which flows from west to east. It is also the area where the floods of June 2021 caused severe devastation.