Brugge is a beautiful city, not dissimilar to Gent and Antwerp. I’m not sure why Brugge seems to get so many more tourists than the other cities though.
I visited the city on a Saturday in August. As you can imagine it was really busy. Too busy in fact. I hate queuing a long time to get into things so I just wandered around the cobbled streets for a while before taking a boat trip around parts of the city.
It was pleasant day sightseeing, but more importantly I got my last clothes wash of the trip completed for some fresh undies for the dahs home.
I met a Spanish cycle tourer in Antwerp and bumped into him again in Brugge. He is from Valencia and taking fifteen days to work his way around Belgium and Holland. There seem to be a lot of Spanish in in Belgium.
I got up early this morning. I wanted to get to Calais as quickly as possible to get an early ferry back to England
It was a Sunday, so I hardly saw a person whilst cycling through the city centre. Once out, I was passing through lovely little villages with something I hate most of all while cycling; a headwind. The wind was so bad I almost got the ferry from Dunkirk instead, but I battled on to Calais, sticking with my original plans.
I came across another English cycle tourer fighting the wind the other side of Dunkirk. I think his name was David. He’d been cycling much of France for a month and was also heading to Calais. We rode together for a while exchanging stories of our trips. I eventually left him and fought my way on to Calais.
I got straight on the 3 o’clock ferry and met a lovely family from Canterbury. All seven of them had cycled from Paris and back within a week. A cycling family, I thought this was brilliant and brave, especially on some of those busier roads.
From Dover I continued towards Folkestone where there was a campsite. Cycling on the left seems absolutely bizarre, I found myself being drawn to the right hand side of the road and I had to make sure I went the right way around islands.
After a quick shower I went to the local pub where I drank a real ale and had a Sunday roast, bliss!