20260929 Redange. Highs and lows. And we arrive in Luxembourg for our first visit ever.

Hiya! Patti here. As John mentioned in the last blog post, we started our day – Tuesday, September 29th – with a visit to the 101st Airborne Museum in Bastogne, Belgium. The Americans paid an enormous price in this area, and as you ride through the town you can see homages paid to war heroes.

Visiting that museum was a sobering experience.

John has always had an interest in first and second World War history – probably something he shared with his dad – and so it was interesting following him through the museum.

The museum featured a number of beautiful anecdotes.

We continued on our way. We had 50 km to cover between Bastogne and Redange, most of it pretty flat but there was this one very steep, bastardy hill up through a neighbourhood and it never seemed to end. Honestly, it was relentless…

When we got to the top, we checked in with Claire, and I think we need to take a moment now to explain something that happened in mid-September.

One of the reasons why John and I can travel for extended periods of time like this – i.e. 4-6 weeks, twice a year – is that Claire is in Toronto, and we know that in her care, John’s mum, Marny (96), is well cared for.

But while we were in Scotland, i.e. two weeks before today’s Redange ride, Claire had a heart attack.

Many texts went back and forth, much hand-wringing, much looking at routes and trying to figure out how to get home from various waypoints if needed. Claire being Claire – sensible, calm, enormously capable – insisted that we continue on our way, and that she would move forward with the help of her enormous network of friends who stepped in immediately – of course – to support with dogwalking (Joey). John’s brother and sister-in-law have taken over Marny-visits, and Claire – from her hospital bed!!! – organized additional PSW support for John’s mum at The Dunfield.

Still, Claire is constantly in our thoughts and on this morning on our way to Redange, at the top of this completely bastardy hill, we checked in with her, and she was recovering well. So we sent her this (slightly giddy) video.

We pushed on from those text communications with Claire (isn’t the internet a wonderful thing in these stressful times?) and arrived at a bucolic setting: a bunch of cows and calves, and one kind-of-disinterested bull. I couldn’t remember if my mum had ever been to Luxembourg but now seemed like a good time to let her enjoy the scenery so I sprinkled some of her ashes on that shaded hilltop, with the girls and the disinterested bull.

Look at that beautiful image. I pinch myself, many times a day. So many beautiful rides. I’ll follow that guy anywhere.

We finally arrived at our BnB in Redange but they weren’t going to accept any guests until 3 so we circled back and rode around town futilely looking for cafes (none) restaurants (none) and finally settled on a huge grocery store (“Cactus”, a chain) where we had jolly chats with the butcher/cheesemonger, bought some beautiful, local pates and cheeses and crackers and zero-beer and wine, and then rode back to our accommodations.

We had no intentions of leaving there once we’d checked in (even though in Luxembourg all public transportation is free so we could have ridden a local bus 5 km to the next town for dinner….)

We were tired. We had a room-meal and did sink-laundry and tucked in to bed early. Not our favourite accommodations of the trip, for sure, (t.b.h. they were weird and noisy) but we were in Luxemburg and had big plans for the next day!!!