This part of the NG route belongs to Honza's team. Eva's team ended its touring in the French town Labastide - Murat, just after a pretty hilly area, at 11pm.

France is a beautiful country. Only those who have never been here are suprised by the bad state of local houses. There are a lot of gothic structures everywhere, most of the towns have a gothic church.
The area we are going through is quite hilly. We passed Reims, Troyes and Tulle. Another surprise are the very straight roads between bigger towns. There mostly isn't much traffic so we can use them easily. Furthermore the french drivers proved to be the most thoughtful ones so far.

It took a lot of effort to go through the south of The Netherlands, the area called Limburg, Belgium and the first 50 km in France as well. We cycled uphill 8 kph, downhill often 60 kph. The only Dutchman in our team went through the very beautiful countryside of Limburg. Belgium was probably nice as well, but we passed at night. And despite our very strong front lights, we could enjoy only the quality of the roads. Jirka entered France at 6:30 am in a crazy steep uphill and then he informed the supporting car, that he feels a bit tired and not so young any more ;-).

We have already passed The Netherlands. Compared to Sweden everything goes too fast. But first something about the previous countries. Honza's team arrived at 8 pm on the 10th of August in the harbor of Helsingborg in Sweden. Sjaak from Eva's team entered the ferry to Helsingor in Denmark. This island, on which Kopenhagen is located, Sjaak almost entirely crossed in a 141 km night trip. Just before the Great Belt Bridge, which connects the island with another Danish island, Eva exchanged Sjaak. But soon the bike had to be loaded into the Master to get over the bridge.

Last 32 hours were extremely hard and both sub-teams did good work. Eva's team started at the north of the Baltic Sea coast 50 km North of Lulea, but they quickly realized that the main road E4 is not suitable for cycling. They were still able to cycle on it, but had to fight from time to time with huge trucks on narrow lanes. Some parts of the road changed into highways, so they had to stop and look for new routes around it.