We signed up for a seven night “Boat and Bike Tour” that had us travelling from Bruges, Belgium to Amsterdam, Netherlands; some of it by bike while our floating home followed and some of it on the barge. We saw so much country and took so many pictures, that we will divide the posts into three sections of two riding days each.

Thursday (Day 1): Bruges to Ghent, Belgium

Thursday started off rainy, first with a light shower, then thunderstorms. By the time we were meant to leave the barge, it was raining quite heavily. We delayed a little bit hoping it would let up, giving Wendy time to grab a shower cap for her helmet.

Here you can see Wendy in the front and Doug in the navy jacket as we head out. Bill and Joanne sensibly stayed on the barge and got off and started riding farther along in Aalterbrug.

It only rained for about an hour and by lunchtime we were dry. We stopped at a cafe in the middle of nowhere. If you ordered a drink, they were happy to let you sit at their tables and eat your lunch. (And use their bathroom) Joanne and Bill joined us here, but had to finish their drink quickly in order to join the first group.

We travelled through some pleasant farmland.

We had a quick photo stop at this private castle (Castle Lovendegem).

It was starting to heat up by the time we reached this windmill, the first of our trip. It was no longer in use and was used as a private residence.

We had our first chance to navigate traffic when we came into Ghent. We left our bikes at the square by St. Michielsburg and had an hour or so to explore the city centre.

Bill was asked to be the “sweep” which means he goes last and has a radio to use in case people get separated. He willingly put on his vest.

Wendy took this picture of the group going over a pedestrian and bike bridge but realized that it was unsettling to the sweep to have people behind him. She learned her lesson and took the next two photos without stopping, just slowing down a little.

We got back to the barge around 6:00 that night. Fifty six kilometres for Doug and Wendy and thirty four kilometres for Joanne and Bill.

Friday (Day 2): Ghent, Belgium to St. Amends, Belgium.

It was foggy and damp on Friday, but not cold, so we all headed out at the standard 9:00. It rained a bit just as we stopped to see another private castle.

There were poppies all along the trail but Wendy was able to get ahead on a cobblestone farm road and quickly took this photo before the whole group passed her.

We rode along a dike for awhile.

Soon we were in Dendermonde. Although this square seems to be circled by the original houses, they were all rebuilt after the First World War. Most of the houses were destroyed or burnt in the war, with only 84 houses left undamaged.

Dendermonde is small enough that you can meet the mayor in the town square. He was biking between meetings and stopped to say hello. He encouraged us to visit the renovated city hall and the display at the visitor centre. Here’s Joanne in front of an historical map of Dendermonde.

We also met a local who joined us for a beer. He was an interesting guy who ran marathons.

We hiked about a half an hour more to the spot that the barge was docked. Doug, Wendy and Joanne hopped on and Bill continued on. Here’s Bill’s photo of one of the spots on his 14 kilometre ride along the river.

And Bill’s view of the barge when we caught up to them a few hours later in St. Amands.

To reach Bruges, we flew to London, then to Brussels, and then took a train to Bruge. The train was so smooth that Wendy could work on the blog as we traveled.

Our apartment in Bruges was up on the first floor in an old building that had been renovated. The high ceilings and ornate furniture gave it an elegant feel.

We were on a street in the centre of town, just down the block from the Market Square. Here’s a view of the street in the early morning, before the tour buses arrived. The second one is taken later in the day, looking the other direction. You can see The Belfry above. The market square is just beyond it.

This is a view of the canal closest to our apartment, taken in the evening. The next morning, we took a canal tour in one of the boats that you can see peeking out under the tree. We had a beer on the patio that you can see in this picture on our last day in Bruges.

The first full day in Bruges started with a canal tour. Doug was lucky enough to score a seat right in the front of the boat. There’s another view of the Belfry on the second photo.

Here’s the Minnewater bridge and a view of the swans in Minnewater Park.

There are modern art installations throughout Bruges. The theme is Liquid City: how flexible, liquid and resilient can a historic city like Bruges be? The Blue Whale was made from plastics apparently retrieved from the sea as a reminder to everyone to use less plastic. The first photo was taken from our canal tour, the second on our own walk on our last day in Bruges.

After the canal trip, we headed over to the Belfry. Three hundred sixty six steps later, we were at the top. Here’s the view of the Market Square below. You can see some of the bells in the second photo. The bells sound every quarter hour, so we were at the top to see and hear the bells ring and also at the level below to see the mechanism in action.

Then another walk around town…

… that ended at “The Beer Wall,” that had a display of beer bottles and glasses, all made in Belgium. The seating was covered but open air. Notice the unique sign designating the toilets just above Doug’s head in the third photo.

So far we were making it through the “tick” list: canal ride, swans, the Belfry and Belgian beer. Now for the waffles. The window of the House of Waffles was just next door to our apartment, so we picked up our order and went upstairs to eat them. The second photo is Joanne with her Double Chocolate Supreme waffle.

After that decadent “lunch,” Doug, Bill and Joanne went downstairs to the Torture Museum. Yes, you read that right, our apartment was two floors up from the museum. Here’s Bill posing with their “tourist attractor.”

Wendy went on her own walking tour. Here’s a view with a canal boat just like the one we were on, and some views of the amazing architecture (and more canals).

Wendy got a good view of Saint Anne’s Church, with its 1624 Baroque edifice. The next day, we all walked by it.

Next: brewery tour! Joanne had booked our tickets to De Halve Maan (The Half Moon) back in April. Here are a couple of pictures from the tour and one of us enjoying the included beer at the end.

And our day wasn’t finished yet! Our tick list so far: canal ride, swans, the Belfry, Belgian beer, fresh waffles, brewery tour. The only thing missing was a meal of mussels and fries. Doug and Bill dealt with that one. The other photo is of the meal that Joanne and Wendy had: white asparagus and smoked Atlantic salmon.

Wednesday is market day and we were lucky enough to be there. You can just see a portion of the central monument behind the striped umbrellas, if you want to contrast it with the almost empty Market Square photo earlier in the post taken from the top of the Belfry. We bought our lunch there and ate it on a nearby bench.

Later that day, we were able to check in to our barge, “The Magnifique II.” Our boat and barge tour from Bruges to Amsterdam is the topic of our next blog.

Our trip to Scotland was planned to celebrate our retirements. We had to wait for the youngest member of our group to retire, but it’s been well worth the wait. Our cute flat in the Stockbridge area of Edinburgh was close to everything. It looked ancient on the outside, and it was by Cranbrook standards, but it was modern inside.

Our jet-lagged bodies needed fresh air and exercise, so we chose a walk along the “Water of Leith,” a riverside trail close to our flat.

Sometimes we were close to the water with birds everywhere.

Sometimes we were above, with fantastic views.

We followed the route to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Here’s a photo of Doug standing in front of the gallery. Behind him is a landscape which unlike the traditional landscape actually is a landscape. It’s titled “Landform,” and is the modern art equivalent of an expansive front lawn.

We walked past St. Margaret’s Cathedral on our way to a pub in Haymarket for lunch.

After our lunch of meat pies, we were back to the Water of Leith, past Stockbridge to the Royal Botanic Gardens. Many of the rhododendrons were in bloom.

So were the azaleas.

Joanne has a degree in forestry and was interested in the labels on all the unique trees. This one is a dawn redwood (if we remember correctly.)

The next day, we attacked Edinburgh Castle by taking a taxi up the hill and being there before it opened. We took advantage of our Explorer Pass to avoid the ticket lines. Here are Joanne, Bill and Wendy waiting in line.

Without rushing, we got up to the viewpoint by Meg’s Mon a and had the place to ourselves for a few minutes.

Here’s a view from a view of the city from a few steps away. Notice the dog cemetery (for soldiers’ dogs) in the foreground.

Here’s the square outside the National War Museum Scotland with a statue of the Earl of Haig (that had been moved from the Esplanade) and the hospital behind.

Inside the Royal Apartments

‘Lil Fox’ found a friend.

Outside the castle, we joined the crowds coming up the Royal Mile.

We were pleased to find a garden just down an alley from the main street that provided a calm retreat and beautiful views.

We walked down to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, but it wasn’t open since there was a Royal visitor staying there. We walked all the way home, making it eleven kilometres by the time we were back at our lodgings. After dinner, we took a short jaunt to the park nearby to look for birds. We saw this grey heron who was not at all upset by our presence.

And this mother coot and her babies.

We’d had a couple of full days in Edinburgh with gorgeous weather but it was time to travel north. Next stop: Speyside.

We stayed at the Zane Grey RV Resort, just outside Camp Verde, in a site surrounded by trees and flowering shrubs. It was close to Montezuma’s Castle, a National Monument. Montezuma’s Castle is another example of an ancient ruin being misnamed when it was first discovered. Southern Sinagua farmers built the five-story, 20-room dwelling sometime between 1100 and 1300. It had its maximum occupation in the 1300s and was occupied for another century, then abandoned. We did a little birding there on a breezy day since it was relatively sheltered and beside a creek.

Here’s a view of our campsite, taken from the back of a vacant site across the road. The second photo is of the “castle” at Montezuma’s Castle NM.

We also visited the hillside community of Jerome. In the early 1900s, Jerome was a booming mining town of 15,000 perched on the mountainside. It was basically a ghost town by the 1960s. Hippies moved in in the 70s and now Jerome is a thriving community of 500 filled with shops, galleries and restaurants. We first visited the Jerome State Historic Park, in the preserved Douglas Mansion. The short video presentation about the history of Jerome was worth the price of admission. We then drove farther up to the main town and were lucky enough to get a parking spot.

Here’s a view of a partial building; behind it is a glass-blowing workshop. The Jerome Chamber of Commerce had some interesting displays in their little museum.

After being windy and cool, the weather improved enough for mountain biking and hiking. On Saturday, we drove up to Sedona (about 45 minutes) to hike to Cathedral Rock. There was no room in the parking lot when we got there at 9:00. We should have known better; hiking in Sedona is very popular. Luckily we consulted our hiking guidebook and map and found a “back way” in. (Baldwin trail to Templeton to Cathedral Rock trail) After half an hour of hiking, we were looking down at the jammed parking lot that we had first attempted to park. The climb up to the saddle was another half hour and was more of a scramble on slick rock than a hike. With some strategy, Doug was able to get his quintessential photo of Wendy near the edge. The photo doesn’t show how crowded it was. The route we took also allowed a great view back to Cathedral Rock in the afternoon light.

We enjoyed our lunch in a quiet spot near Oak Creek, very close to this vortex site. Vortex sites are places where some people believe energy crackles most intensely. And we had to include a cactus in bloom.

We got up earlier on Sunday and drove through to West Sedona and up to Boynton Pass Road and the Fay Canyon Trailhead. This trailhead was only just beginning to fill at 8:30 when we started our bike ride on the Aerie Trail. We made a loop around Doe Mountain and connected to the Cockscomb trail. The trail was a bit rocky but “rideable”, with the more technical sections at the beginning of the loop, and some nice flowy sections and fun “whoops” near the end.

Since we had already secured a parking spot, we walked across the road and hiked the short Fay’s Canyon trail. Highlights were seeing a rattlesnake up close (without consequences) and identifying a black-throated gray warbler.

Another day, we rode starting at the Bell Rock Trailhead and repeated most of a route that Wendy had ridden with friends a couple of years ago, when Doug was not yet able to get back on his bike. We rode up the Bell Rock Pathway and joined the Llama trail. We didn’t mind walking the canyon section of Little Horse. Then we cruised back via the Bell Rock Pathway.

Here are a couple of views from the Llama trail.

We found a hike that was closer to our RV park in Camp Verde and was also considered a “hotspot” for birding: West Clear Creek trail. The trail passes a popular swimming hole, where people can jump of the red rock cliffs into the deep pools. No photos of Wendy jumping in (we didn’t come to swim) but you could check out the “Bull Pen” swimming hole on-line if you’re interested. We did cross the creek twice; one crossing had mid-thigh water with a rocky bottom and luckily a gentle current. We saw some nice birds: our first really good look at an ash-throated flycatcher and a pair of summer tanagers were the highlights.

West Clear Creek has water in it all year and flows into the Verde River.

We travelled about half an hour northwest to Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood, AZ to be on site for the Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival. We both went on field trips for all four mornings of the festival. There were afternoon and evening sessions offered, but we were almost saturated with viewing birds from our morning sessions (about 45-55 species each day).

Here is our group at Travasci Marsh, reached by a trail system right in Dead Horse Ranch State park. The highlights of this trip were seeing a yellow-breasted chat and Bullock’s oriole.

We also had good bird viewing at our trailer. The previous campers at our site had sprinkled bird seed on the ground in the dirt beside the picnic table and between the bushes and brush. Our regular visitors were Gambel’s quail, green-tailed towhees, sparrows (Brewer’s, chipping, white-crowned, black-throated and lark), and house finches. One day as we were sitting out, a pair or northern cardinals flew into the nearby bushes. Doug was patient enough to capture these photos of the male (bright) and the female (with attitude!).

And there were always the hummingbirds. We purchased this cute window feeder at the Mesa market. Amazingly, the hummingbird’s tongue can reach to the end of the tube. We also had little verdin feeding from them. Here’s a black-throated hummingbird feeding outside our window of the trailer.

Here are some highlights of the birds we saw. A great blue heron in flight.

Male (red) and female (yellow) summer tanagers.

A male lazuli bunting and a male Bullock’s oriole.

We listened to chatter of the yellow-breasted chat on all four days until the last day when one finally showed itself. (left bird). The more drabber bird on the right is the ash-throated flycatcher, another bird that we heard more than we saw.

And here are a few LGJs “little gray jobs”. The gray flycatcher on the left is identifiable by it’s tail-wagging behaviour. The gray vireo (right bird) was more elusive, but Doug was quick enough to get this shot.

We had a great time birding at the Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival. Each of our guides was knowledgeable, each had their own style and strength, and we learned and picked up things from them all. We visited four different birding locations: Montezuma Well, Sedona Wetlands, Bubbling Ponds Preserve IBA and Tavasci Marsh, all places that we will return to on our own when we come to this area again.

We are on our way home now and can hardly believe that we’ve been away for over six weeks. Our new fifth wheel feels like home and has met and exceeded our expectations. Stay tuned for our summer adventures in “Big Red.”