Luxemburger

Arlon to Metz (98km)

From leaving the campsite to the Luxembourg border, I knew that I needed to follow the same road for 10km. Despite this simple task, I somehow got lost and gleefully added 8km onto my day. My detour meant that I went through a village that hosted a cycle museum, I wasn’t planning on visiting it anyway, but their sadistic decision to put it on top of a hill made my decision final. I eventually re-joined the correct road and without noticing, crossed the border into Luxembourg. I had again attached a baguette to the back of the bike after yesterday’s success. However, without getting bogged down in culinary fineries, todays baguette was longer than yesterdays. This meant that it was poking into my back a little bit and also sticking out the back of the bike. Just after I’d entered Luxembourg, I heard something fall from the back of the bike, I turned around to see that the baguette had snapped off, leaving only a mouthful of bread remaining on the bike, looks like the lunch menu just changed.

My initial plan was to avoid going directly into Luxembourg City, however, all routes seemed to take me right into the middle of the city. I have found that most big cities in the region have excellent cycle paths into and out of the city, Luxembourg City seemed no different, so I relented and headed into town. Indeed, the cycle paths proved to be excellent and navigating the city was no issue at all, I went passed the Gare de Luxembourg and along the Avenue de la Liberte (Luxembourg’s version of the Champs Elysees or the main street in Aberdour).

As quickly as I’d entered Luxembourg, I was soon out of it again. I had the option of either continuing south into France or south east into Germany, I chose France for language reasons. The final part of the day was again a nice bike path, that was spoilt slightly when I went over a bump and my phone fell out and landed on the ground. It was already pretty cracked on the back due to an earlier incident and now had a matching one on the front, most worryingly, there was a small crack over the front camera which could affect my selfie ability for the rest of the trip. The bike path continued all the way into Metz, where I set up camp. Today was another scorcher of a day, my cycling jersey at the end of the day was covered in salt, proof that I’d been working hard and not just enjoying a relaxing cycle in Europe as some of my cynical critics have suggested.