Day 1: Antwerp - Lille

• Antwerp - Lille: 49 km (30.4 miles)
• Iconic cycle route: Kempen Route
• Accommodation: B&B Stillant in Lille

At the end of the day, just before the sun sinks behind the surrounding conifers, I dive into the lake by the Lilse Bergen, just outside Lille. The restaurant on the site is full; it is bingo night. I can hear the cheers from here and I take a deep dive once again into the refreshing water.

Eight hours earlier and forty kilometres (24.8 miles) behind us on the Flemish roads, we began our first day of cycling. Photographer David Peskens and I are on a six-day cycling trip through Flanders; the first stretch cuts straight through the Limburg Kempen region, after which we follow the Meuse and then cycle through Haspengouw to Leuven. We follow three of Flanders’ Iconic cycle routes, mostly anyway, starting with the Kempen Route. We take our luggage with us on e-bikes, which we rent from Bikepacking Belgium close to Antwerp-Berchem railway station. Owner Thomas van Bunder is a cycling enthusiast - in his shop we find everything we need to literally keep on the move in the coming days. Along the way, we are going to stay in cosy B&Bs - no big hotels on this trip.

Off we go! Via Deurne, Wijnegem... we follow the Albert Canal. I used to be an avid collector of Suske and Wiske albums,  on this trip I have decided to research  which of the many villages I pass that have been used as a location in an album. In cosy Oelegem, I strike gold right away: album 201, Het Dreigende Dinges, is set in this village - information that is not particularly useful, nor can I find any connection in the streets, but which nevertheless still gives me a warm feeling.

Thus, there are no traces of the famous comic in Oelegem, but we do spot a little pub there that we cannot just cycle past. Café Boerenhof Ranst. The interior is charming, atmospheric and dark. Signed cycling jerseys hang on the walls. Discreetly, owner Yves points out to an elderly gentleman in the corner, over eighty years old. ‘He won seven tour stages, and the Tour in 1966.’ We toast those achievements with a local, unfiltered Titsenbier, a typical Oelegem brew, and set off for Lille - not the one in France but the one here in Flanders - to take that dip in the lake by the Lilse Bergen.