Into the land of lace and beer

Raining of course, but what's new, as we cycled across the unmarked border into Belgium. We were riding on a fulsome canal heading into a fierce wind and avoiding the hardy locals out for an amble, admiring the sheep, most with tails, ajisting on the steep canal banks.

A swan family

We spent a morning admiring a Dutch village name Veere. It was once an old seaport but the dike built across the sea to its west has now reduced it to a harbour for expensive yachts. The village had once been a fort, cannons standing ready to shoot down marauders, and two churches of grandeur ready to bless all troops and aristocrats. One church was bigger than St Patrick's in Melbourne. This seems to be the pattern. Small villages with huge churches. The geometry stuns me as I look upward at their soaring spires and towers.

Cat in a Veere window

We cycled across some amazing feats of engineering on our day riding to Kamperland, urged on by the screeching of gulls. Three large dikes, one of which was approx. 8 kms long, all have multi-lane roads as well as adjacent roads for bikes and scooters. My sense of vertigo prevented me from looking down into what others described as the roiling sea around the concrete pillars. The 1953 flood caused the government of the day to rethink its approach to the sea which has resulted in these expansive concrete and steel dikes. A story board assured me that no environmental damage resulted from the construction.

Belgian farms are different again. The farmhouses look more like ours, small and not part of a house-barn complex. Pairs of vases dominated the Dutch windows. Here there is not the same attention to symmetrical detail. Charolais cattle graze the ample pasture and the redolent barn smells of Germany seem to have been left behind as more and more animals are free-range as opposed to being in barns on a permanent basis.

Now to Brugge. What a storybook city this is. There are more fancy pants buildings per square centimetre than anywhere I have ever been. Horses and carts carry tourists to and fro. I was particularly taken by the Jack Russell who sits all day beside his mistress, wagging his tail and looking for all the world as if this is the best thing a dog can do all day. Last night we witnessed a two-horse one car pile up. A horse bolted, tossing its driver off and probably terrorizing its passengers, a family of four out for a nighttime gallop. All ended well enough. The cafe restored its chairs and flower boxes that were knocked over, the driver, a young woman, regained control of her horse after having been thrown out and chasing it down the cobbled street, and the family climbed back in, presumably to continue their tour.

Horse in Brugge

We have strolled the streets, sampled the chocolates and beer and enjoyed a Flemish lunch at a local cafe. Barges and boats cruise the canal that circles the old city. Cars dart in and out avoiding pedestrians and cyclists on the cobbles. I found this city hard to ride through and so have tied the Silver Fox up until we arrive in France.

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