MEGA BIKING ROUTES FROM VOORT IN LIMBURG
Cyclelive Magazine went to explore the beautiful region and surroundings from the Hof van Kalenberg in Voort. Renting this vacation home to go cycling together from here is the ideal way to organize a cycling vacation or weekend. With the cycling club or your company on cycling-teambuilding trek to tighten and strengthen the bonds … Well, that seems to us indeed the ideal formula for team building. But also for just being together with friends or family and discovering a beautiful region by bike, this is a great idea.
Borgloon is in itself a historic town that is certainly worth a visit. But especially its location is ideal for making beautiful bike tours. With the electric bicycle or road bike you have so many diverse possibilities. A very varied hinterland awaits you both in terms of nature and culture. Would you like to combine recreational/electric cycling with history and culture? Then cycle east to Tongeren (9 km), the oldest city in Belgium, and continue along the pleasant back roads on the old Roman route to Maastricht (25 km). In a westerly direction you cycle to Sint Truiden (11 km) and Hasselt (18 km) lies north of Borgloon. In between, you ride through the blossoms of the fruit region and soak up the cozy Limburg atmosphere. However, we were looking for a more challenging course and since we like to head for the sun so much, our noses were pointed south….
From Borgloon to the Wall of Huy
From the Hof van Kalenberg, we bike at a trot and along rural roads via Heers over Borgworm to Wallonia. It goes slightly sloping with the wind on the nose to Huy, where the Wall is waiting for us. Le Mur de Huy who doesn’t know it? This wall has become a true cycling monument since the 1983 Walloon Arrow planted its finish here. It is an internationally known climb in the cycling world and the closer you get to Huy, the more you start thinking: “oy, this is going to hurt”! Soon we experience for ourselves what we had been thinking about for half an hour. The ascent takes us along the Chemin des Chapelles in a suburb of Huy. This is apparently holy ground because you cycle past seven chapels. It doesn’t occur to me to pray for good legs, however, because I believe that focus and confidence in myself will get me to the top quickly.
That confidence and focus are more than needed when we come to the famous nearly 20% turn. Here it’s fierce gnashing of teeth and the crusade continues longer than hoped, as the high percentages continue to snake along nicely for a while. As the road slowly turns left, the percentages begin to decrease. The summit is at the big church…where some will give thanks for the strength they received to get up here.
To make the challenge more difficult, we added a little round of Huy and did the climb of the mythical wall a second time, to get used to it. When we reach the summit the second time, however, we know that another more difficult challenge awaits us nearby and we focus on the Thier de Huy.
We cycle to the village of Chanteliere (Marchin) which is just outside Huy and turn right here into the street Thier de Huy. Then keep right because you have two options here (left is the easier Vieux Thier de Huy). A 100 meters further on there is a wall right in front of us. The percentages around 18% chase everything into the very dark red zone. The buildings on the side of the road show us how terribly steep it is here. The road surface is pitifully bad and I wonder if this was what we really wanted to do? For nearly a kilometer, the percentages hover somewhere between 10 and 20%, before leveling off from 7% to 1% for another half kilometer. The acidifying juices squirt through my ears and every other orifice, in every direction through and out of my body, when I reach the top.
Are we crazy? A little bit yes, but that still feels so terribly good! Wow, yeah!!.. That was some nice going deep! Crazy as we are, we even feel happy that it is not all over for today. So on the way back to Voort we are looking forward to making a little detour past Amay and, of course, the Mur d’Amay. Over 1.8 kilometers, this wall – which is a soft-boiled egg compared to the previous two – takes us 111 meters higher. With an average gradient of 6.3%, we experience this as a nice gentle climb. However, almost at the top we begin to feel the exertions of all that has gone before quite a bit. We are content to let ourselves slide down and even more content that we can now cycle back to the Hof van Kalenberg with the wind at our backs. So we have done a total of 128 km with a lot of altimeters that we sometimes cursed during the ride, but which we now look back on with a very satisfied and even a little proud feeling. Tired but satisfied, after a beneficial shower we throw ourselves into the Jacuzzi for a relaxing and healing half hour of wellness fun.
Additional tip: From Voort, a round of Hallembaye is also a top ride that should be on your ‘to do list’. Best do this ride on the weekend, as there is less heavy traffic on the sometimes busy Hallembaye road then.
Routes
Hof van Kalenberg – Muur van Hoei – Hof van Kalenberg: 115 km (less difficult version than described above)
Hof van Kalenberg – Dwars door Haspengouw: 110 km
Hof van Kalenberg – Maastricht (Hallembaye, Valkenburg,…) – Hof van Kalenberg : 140 km
Text and image: Patrick Van Gansen
