August 1: Day 3, Genk to Aachen
Wasn't feeling good this morning, and given the hot weather the reason is probably dehydration. I'll skip the specifics: by coffee #4 I was feeling normal.
A bit of disappointment with Genk. The main reason I came this way was to see a digital sundial: ie, a sundial that displays time like a digital clock. I was expecting to find it in the nearby Sundial Park, but I scoured the place both last night and this morning and couldn't find it.
It looks like it's gone from unique prototype to enthusiastic business to lost interest. Their webpage is https://www.digitalsundial.com/, says "Copyright 2001-2016", their last update is 2023 saying it's sold out. And the website for Sundial Park itself was last updated in 2004. So I think I'm a few years too late.
(Sundial Park did have a wide range of other sundials, but in comparison with the digital sundial they're deeply disappointing. For example, the cone sundial is marked with two systems of measuring time: on the east side are "Babylonian hours" which start at sunrise, on the west are "Italian hours" which start at sunset. Also, the times they showed often had no resemblance to what my phone thought the time was. Not just a missing hour for daylight savings, which I'd understand, but three-and-a-quarter hours wrong. There's a lot of space for disappointment.)
Back into the Netherlands. The route is getting noticeably hillier. I've changed gears twice already today, which is a clear sign that I'm far from home.
Through Maastricht. There's a bent bridge, a Saturday market, tourists everywhere. The cycle routes here are treacherous. They switch from two-way to one-way with little warning, and failure to notice and cross over the road at the right time means running the wrong way up a one-way bikepath. Fortunately it's Saturday and quiet. I stop to get some pictures but my heart isn't in it so I press on.
From left to right: Untrustworthy bottle cap this morning. Pole where I think the digital sundial used to be. Maastricht, during an unusually quiet moment. A much nicer place to hang out. Lunch view.
It's getting progressively steeper and there's more and more road cyclists around. The final climb up the Vaalserberg to the highest point in the Netherlands (322.4m) has big cycle lanes marked on both sides and only space for one car in the middle; traffic has to wait. I see more cyclists than cars on the climb.
The other thing up here is the Three-Country Labyrinth. It's a hedge maze, with several bridge connections to defeat the hand-on-wall strategy. It's aimed at families and so there's multiplayer interactive games and puzzles along the way, which solo travellers miss out on. There's also some kind of lore and/or story which I didn't pay attention to, because I'm only here for the maze.
The standout feature is timed fountains in the floor, which spray higher then lower in a pattern you can't really predict, so they gather small queues of people weighing their impatience against the risk of getting wet. I didn't see anyone get soaked but it was creating some great drama.
I had a few false starts, and after a bit of bumbling around I lost my patience for random searching, so I got up onto a bridge, and plotted out a route. Which did get me to the end, but left me feeling like maybe getting there directly means I'd shortchanged myself. Nevertheless, I'm glad I made the trip; even bad hedge mazes are enjoyable, and this is a good one.
After that is a long downhill into Aachen, over to the cheap side of town and my hotel. The cycle route was on the road and among traffic, which is tense. I get there in one piece, but I don't like buses getting into my personal space and don't trust cars to not kill me so it's not an experience I enjoy.
From left to right: Former customs office on the NL-DE border, now the smallest museum in the Netherlands. View inside. Usual view of the labyrinth. View from the finish. Highest point in the Netherlands, 322m. Marker where the three borders meet. Spillage from the water bottle.
The other disappointment was that one of my water bottles leaked. It was a new one I'd picked up just before leaving Amsterdam, and I didn't notice that it didn't have a screw cap. Instead it's got a cap you flip up, which is much quicker and easier but far less reliable. When I was unpacking I found the cap had popped open and about a cup of water must have spilled out. I'd put my electronics in the other pannier this morning, specifically becaue I was worried this might happen. The only thing in there that isn't really waterproof is my bag of tools: it's in a plastic bag just in case something like this happens. But some water got in and the tools are damp. So I've unpacked the whole pannier and it's all hanging up to dry.
Last day tomorrow. Hopefully there's no more big disappointments in store.
