In which Sid and Doris come into Bruges, which has been carefully renovated so you can imagine this medieval merchant port as it was in the fifteenth century – with less horse poo and more ice cream.
But first the cycle journey. Even the guide made few promises for this stretch.
Some years ago S and D vied with friends to find the most dull postcard. Yes, Mr Spec we mean you. We had some classics: the municipal camp site comes to mind. Mostly of course they do not. So it is a shame we did not record the Q8 station so discreetly tucked down a little side road with the dude’s garage business in its tidy unit behind the house. It could have been a contender.
Doris has marveled at the gardening. Try this tidy ploughing. You can see S and D are getting into Flanders culture. Arable land takes up about 40% of Belgium (which is about the size of Maine). 1.3% of the labour pool work in agriculture to create 0.7% of GDP so they need all the efficiencies the big machines bring. Roll on the autonomous GPS tractors planting the leeks in the tops of these furrows as they go. Maybe this is the missing post card, though it has some merit in its composition?
Much more charming was a field of sheep with their Easter lambs, where one junior ring leader led the other youths in an impromptu ovine rodeo. A happy memory but no photo.
And what is this? Another vanishing point photo with a Doris eye view of cycling with Sid, unless he is behind for some wily drafting.
Bruges will bring plenty of pretty but for now this is house of the day. Not any sort of attraction. No known history, just a quiet moment to look and enjoy.
In the town of our coffee stop the populace is gathering in black and somber hues for an important funeral. Someone has parked their unsombre Mehari, and conveyance of the day, just around the corner. Quel discretion.
On the final run in, along the canal again, there is a huge bunker which has been repurposed in a spirit of ingenuity and kindness into a bat house.
More history is not far away. At the next bridge there is a shot up Sherman, sawn up and welded into a memorial of the battle for this crossing in 1944. The losing side does not get a rehashed Panzer or a plaque.
Suddenly neither this towpath nor the bridge is available so the Belges have built a scaffolding bridge with long ramps that you can (but are not supposed to) ride a bike up and over.
When we get to our next bridge it is lifted for a couple of barges to go up towards Zeebrugge.
Now on the final stretch alongside the canals and into the heart of Bruges. The picture shows a boat hotel but Doris has wielded the card of treasure so the next stop for the duo is the NH hotel in the town centre. (This in preference to our holiday company’s choice of the VeloHotel some miles away from the action.)
Once inside the canal network we can see tourist farming in action which is much more remunerative than growing leeks, even if the tourists are still horse drawn
Bruges is very pretty. S and D wander the canals and find their B&B from the last trip before settling on a visit to the Groeningemuseum. Having missed the Van Eyck in Ghent a couple of years back this is an opportunity to see the portrait of his wife and two pictures – helpfully mounted under glass so you can get really up close and see the details without the curators getting twitchy. 
The museum’s pictures date from about 1430 and by the end of the 1500s our eyes are already about full of Hieronymous Bosch and Gerard David, Pieter Bruegel and Hans Memling and other paintings.
So we scootled through the other rooms refusing to be distracted by charming details such as this.
Although this one did bring us and many of our fellow scootlers to an abrupt halt/double-take.
Onwards and outwards into Bruges and time for some cheesy tourist shots before a dinner which didn’t actually include chips. Well, not many chips.
