welcome to the hotel lepelbed

located close to gent in the flanders region of belgium is hotel lepelbed. as mentioned previously it was our stop over on route to our family holiday, and we also used it on the home to the uk at the end of our trip.

after some research prior to our trip i had decided on staying in this hotel due to it's geographic location, being roughly a half way stopping point, it being close to the motorway and because i had noticed on the hotel's website that they cater for athletes, particularly of the cycling variety, i figured it would be a good option.  now i do not claim to be an athlete, or at least my athletic prowess is of modest proportions.  still being a cycling fan i decided if the hotel is good enough for cycling teams to stay at then it would most probably be good enough for us.

upon arrival we were immediately struck by all of the cycling jerseys adorning the walls of the corridors which as one might imagine got me a little excited.  betty pulled out her best nikon camera and took photos of all the jerseys which i have posted here.  many of them are signed and some are signed to norbert.

it was cathy who had greeted us on arrival at hotel lepelbed.  she turned out to be the daughter of norbert who we met the following morning at breakfast and what a pleasure it was to meet this charming man.  over fresh coffee and a tempting selection of pastries the likes of which i have never seen before norbert told us about how he used to do the catering for team csc and that nowadays aged seventy three and in semi retirement he is limiting himself to only doing the catering for the belgium national team, so will be responsible for filling the bellies of tom boonen and philippe gilbert etc at the forthcoming world championships in limburg netherlands at the end of this month.

he also mentioned endura racing would be arriving the day after we left to prepare for the gp stad zottegem.  i took the liberty of tweeting enduring racing a few days later who came back to me with a tweet saying the boys gave the thumbs up to hotel lepelbed.

i wish i had had more chance to talk to norbert about his career and the people he knows.  he did mention he had a good relationship with patrick sercu who now helps organise the six days of gent which takes place in november.  if i manage to get back over to gent to watch some of the six days i already know which hotel i will be staying at.

hotel lepelbed