BRUGES – Belgium (Mon 16 Nov)

We found out this morning exactly why there are so many bikes in Bruges, it’s because the public transport cannot be relied upon. Well not exactly but we are guessing that it is a factor. We have been told that there are 2.4 bikes for every person living here. We are guessing that that is one good one, one clunker to ride around and leave parked out side shops, and one that has had it’s wheels stolen or run over (there seems to be a lot of those).

As we don’t have bikes, we’re going to walk today. We were going to hire bikes and ride to Damme, but then we found out that it was only 5kms away and hardly worth getting a bike out for. We set off along the canal, and when we arrived in Damme we discovered that we had walked 8kms. The second bit of bad news was that the Info Centre was just closing for the day, the rest of the town was already closed, and the bus that we were going to catch to the coast doesn’t run during the winter season.

We now had a choice, we could return to Bruges where we had come from, or keep walking to the coast, after all it is just another 10kms. We followed the cycle path alongside a series of canals. In retrospect, we should have brought a map as we don’t think that we chose the most direct route. We arrived in Knokke-Heist five hours after leaving home. We thought it would be nice and romantic to follow the canal, but after five hours of walking along a road like path, flanked by tall, bald, oak trees, with the wide, empty canal to the left of us, it started to lose its appeal. The path was very long and very straight, disappearing like a pin prick into the distance. The weather was a little damp when we set out, but fortunately this cleared shortly … to be replaced by winds that were strong enough that we had to lean forwards to maintain momentum. The wind did slacken from time to time … but that was the indicator that it was about to rain. The weather in this country is exactly as they say it is … dismal.

We did finally reach the North Sea, the coastline that the Belgium’s are so proud of, the coastline of which Belgium possesses a whole 65kms. We were greeted by a wide open, sand plain of beach, being swept of its sand by ferocious winds. We had no one to share it with but a group of seagulls hunkered down by the storm water pipe (at least that’s what we hope it is), seagulls that appeared too scared to become airborne for fear of landing in the Netherlands and having to walk back.

We spent a short time being pummeled along the beach, following a lone pair of footprints, the owners of which had long since disappeared. We tried to follow them hoping that they would lead us to somewhere warm, we didn’t need to be expert trackers as one of the sets of feet were sporting high heel shoes, which at times seemed to disappear into patches of soft, wet sand. Not the recommended beach wear, perhaps it was a first date.

We did manage to warm ourselves up with a nice hot coffee, before heading home … this time by train. The journey took a whole 15 minutes. So much quicker, but not the same adventure. And to think, if we had headed in the other direction, we could have walked to the Netherlands and back.

Not the way we had envisioned spending our last day in Bruges, being blown along cycle paths, on a day when the locals know to stay indoors.