Stage One - Rotterdam to Brussels

Stage One started off as a comedy of errors.  We got up early, intending to start off on what was supposed to be a 10 mile journey from Rotterdam to the Atlantic Ocean Coast, south through the western most Netherlands, and then heading east and south down to Brussels.  140 miles.   But, we had problems getting on the wrong road, going through a tunnel, u-turning and returning, and basically missing our starting mark by about an hour.  Then, of course our various Garmin Toys did not respond properly and we had to spend considerable time getting to work before we left.  We finally left the starting line about 9:30am.  Still, no problem finishing, but we soon found that following the Tour de France route "exactly" would be impossible.  Between street light stops delaying us, detours taking us way out of the Route, and the reality that a lot of the Tour was run on national highways shut down for the day, we found out early that it was going to be impossible to make it all the way to Brussels in one day.  We rode some alternates parallel to the national highways that were wonderful, trips through the farm countryside, often leading us away and back to the Route.  The Dutch have built an impressive system of bike highways throughout the country, and if you are not in a hurry, or have a fixed goal as we have, they serve quite adequately getting a bicyclist from A to B. 

Finally, about 7pm we met Gwen, loaded with goodies, wine, cheese, beer, etc. in a small town just north of Antwerp.  We had covered 120 of the 140 tour miles to Brussels, but were still about 50-60 miles from Brussels - good indication of the route compromises we had to make.  We decided to call it quits, and hope that both our start and our route the next day from Brussels to Spa would be less frought with the difficulties we faced tday.