Day 22: In Bruges

August 4, 2024

Ursel, BE to Bray-Dunes, FR

That night it rained pretty hard. The next day I woke up again to slugs having attacked the outside of my tent. Ugh, why! But at least I and all my gear that was inside the tent woke up dry. I cleaned my drive train AGAIN.

The Dutch family offered me some coffee in the morning which was very kind of them and I gladly accepted - maybe my aeropress will come with if I switch to a 4 pannier setup in the future. They had a moka pot on them which I found amusing.

After violently flinging the slugs as far from my tent as possible (no longer going to be nice to these things), I rolled off around 830.

The itinerary for today is to roll through Bruges then Ostend then wound our way west along the coast back to the French border.

Now if you’ve never seen the movie “In Bruges” I’m going to helpfully bold everything that’s a quote because I’m going to quote the hell out of it in this entry. It’s by far one of my favorite movies (and easily favorite directors, Martin McDonagh). The point of bolding it is so you don’t think I’ve gone off the rails. I’m also sure the locals are sick of this movie by now so even though I was quoting it all day I kept it to myself… until now!

The premise of the movie is two hitmen have to head to Bruges in hiding from London. During a hit, one of them accidentally killed an innocent child - Bruges is his purgatory. The gang boss sent him there to “hide” but really plans to off him. The second hitman refuses to do the job and help him find some solace and resolution to get out of purgatory. Maybe accepting what went wrong and turning himself in, for starters.

So in any case the original hitman doesn’t care that Bruges is a beautiful fairytale town since obviously he’s preoccupied with his terrible crime.

“It’s a [bleepin] fairytale city isn’t it? How can that not be someone’s [bleepin] thing!”

So I get to Bruges and the first order of business is a cafe to have a coffee and assess what I wanted to see in my stop.

Riding along the helpfully named Gent Brugge canal in the direction of Brugge

“Ken, I grew up in Dublin (near Chicago), I love Dublin (Chicago). If I grew up on a farm, Bruges might impress me but I didn’t so it doesn’t”. Definitely jokes, the town is insanely cute and I have a lovely lunch. I decided the best way to spend my couple of hours is just walk around and take some photos. I wasn’t too chuffed about going up the Belfort or anything like that and wasn’t sure I had time for a full boat tour of all the canals of the city.

I bought another sticker for my bike and then walked around grabbing some photos. My drive train was still being loud, although I had finally figured out why. It was a dumb issue that was my fault - I routed the chain on the wrong side of the hanger tab! Since I didn’t have a second quick link I decided to wait and ask a shop to re route it just in case the quick link fails on open/close. The shops would open the following day - a Monday finally.

Me to my chain: “You’re a [bleeping] inanimate object!”

I went to grand marketplace which seems common in many of these Flemish cities I’ve been passing through and then grabbed some photos by the canals.

I don’t know why when you ask a stranger for a photo with a building and bike they they think that the bottom half of the building is enough. But I’m still glad to have some non selfie photos of this trip.

Then headed off to the canals and spent 10 minutes getting the right angle to have the bike and the canal in without accidentally running into throngs of sightseers so I get why it’s hard.

Anyways the hours spent in Bruges were magical. It really is a fairytale city. Somehow they’ve preserved the almost medieval aesthetic in a way that all of these equally old cities (Luxembourg, Brussels, Heidelberg), simply have not. And that’s unique and I’m glad I got to see it.

“I think I’d like to see Bruges again before I die.”

“A great day this turned out to be. I’m suicidal, me gun gets nicked, me friend tries to kill me, and we’re still in fookin’ Bruges!”

The rest of the day was downhill from there. Actually it wasn’t because Flanders is pancake flat. It was a very flat 25 km to Ostend, a beach city, and my first glimpse of the coast. We made it to the sea!

there were these interesting docks every few hundred meters for a while

I rounded west to wrap up the days riding, spending much of the afternoon hanging out looking at the ocean and relaxing. Just over the French border was my campsite.

A thing about French camping they don’t like to have toilet seats on their toilets over here - something about hygiene but it’s kind of strange to me as the logic isn’t very sound. The idea is porcelain is easier to stay clean than a plastic toilet seat.

I was also the only tent camper that night so I got the whole tent meadow to myself which was pretty slick.

Back to camp meals- meat, cheese, and bread were my fare for the evening.

Thanks for reading.

Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 1,634 km (1,015 miles)

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