After spending the night in the hotel “Les Gens de Mer”, where we could park our bikes in one of the meeting rooms, we wanted to have a look at the Quai de la Cunette to see a bit of the harbour of Dunkerque, but it was no fun to bike against the wind that was so strong as it was even magnified by the high facades built along the Quai.
At the beach of Dunkerque, called “Plage de Malo-les-Bains” which sounded to me like the French word for bathing trunks = maillot de bain, we found a tourist office.
Being back on the continent and Robert not having the tent and air matrasses anymore on his bike, we were able to shift the loads a bit and I took the risk to buy a special souvenir. It was a candle in the shape of a Saint James shell that I wanted to get as a birthday candle for my mother, when we would arrive back home in more than a week. But there were some tourists before us who took forever with their consultation and kept the lady from the tourist office busy. Robert was checking bike maps in the meantime as we suddenly heard a loud crash outside. Robert’s bike was blown over by the storm and fell on the hard pavement, and broke his rearview mirror.
We asked the ladies in the tourist office if they knew a place where we could replace the mirror, but as it was a Sunday we had no chance to find a bike shop that was open. At least I finally got my candle and we got back on our saddles.
Having been on our bikes for more than 4.600 km by now, we suddenly realized how important this little rearview mirror perspective was for our security, because it allowed us to see big trucks, busses or cars coming from behind. Especially in these windy conditions it was sometimes important to see what was coming, trying to keep our balance with all the weight and the windshield factor, as suddenly the push wave of a huge truck was blowing us nearly off the road.
Leaving Dunkerque we finally got into the dunes and now even Nicolai understood the reason for the town’s name: the church in the dunes! – because I had always understood from the German translation “Dünkirchen” that it might have the meaning of a “thin church”. I had a good laugh about myself and this misunderstanding. Actually we didn’t realize how close we were to the famous village of Bergues, which got famous through the film “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” from 2008. Another good reason to laugh and watch this film again when we would be back home.
But now we had to cross the border to Belgium and the wind nearly carried us over the dykes and fields as we followed a canal. This canal connected us with the defensive star shaped fortified city wall of Veurne. We had lunch at the market place in the restaurant “De Plakker”. The bell towers were ringing and we seemed to be in another time, because Veurne was so lucky to keep its beautiful historic architecture, which was not affected by World War II. From there we kept on following the canal to join the coast at Westende.
If you want to bike along the coastline of Belgium you have to know that they didn’t get a lot of it. So wherever real estate developers could set a foot on a beach the speculative bubble blew up the objects to a maximum size, and filled most of the coastline with a skyline of ugly high-rise appartement buildings in the front row. Only some houses were left over from the good old days and squeezed in between the massive neighbouring buildings. This is the common picture you get from Westende to Oostende and further on.
In between there are dunes, and all the coast towns are connected by a tramway and a road, which seemed to disappear under the sand which was blown horizontally over it by the storm. The only things that survived all the storms since the Second World War were the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall built by Hitler.
From Oostende we followed the Gent-Brugge-Oostende Kanaal inland on the Vaartdijk Zuid, where we discovered “t’Spaans Tolhuis” (=the Spanish Tollhouse). The name goes back to the 16th century and it was a wonderful little restaurant and coffee place right by the Plassendale Lock. The owners were fascinated by our long bike tour and we gave them our link on Facebook, and they posted a picture of us on their Instagram page.
The Kanaal lead us directly to the beautiful city of Brugge, which is a jewel of architecture compared to what we had seen at the coast. Everything seems to be right from a picture book, and from the amount of tourists you can tell that that is what they are looking for.
Arriving by bike in such a touristy city makes you somehow feel already more connected to the place than if you had been stepping out of a bus with a group, following a tour guide holding up his flag. Unfortunately we were just too late to get into any church to receive a stamp for our credentials. So we had no proof of having been there, but we were feeling it already in our legs. We still had to continue for another 20 km through the picturesque surroundings, where windmills and canals within fields made you feel like in a medieval painting.
In Belgium even the size of the fields is kept small compared to the Netherlands. Everything seems like in a puppet house. But when we arrived at Pim’s house after having biked nearly 100km over the day, the dogs welcoming us were oversize.
In his house close to Maldegem two huge Newfoundlanders are completely dominating all the space they can get, and on top of that deer in the backyard are looking into the kitchen window. We really felt like being in the countryside.
