C2A: Ghent and environs
Up at the luxuriant hour of 7:30. The sun’s shining when we awake but coyly retreats behind a veil of cloud while we pack. I’m fine with that. My skin needs a break.
Easy riding out of Bruges, following the cyclepath alongside a broad, straight road headed due east. There’s a bit of a tailwind so we get a good clip going. I’m sore but I don’t feel bad; I wonder if this is what being a cyclist feels like.
Clouds roll in, relieving us of the burden of the sun for a few hours.
Outside of a town called Adegem we pass a Canadian war cemetery; we stop and dismount. Some combination of physical exhaustion and the distance from home makes me emotional. A lot of the graves have personal messages from family and friends; most of them are quotes from the bible or from psalms but there are a few demonstrating unconcealed grief from parents or wives, and these are very moving.
I try to read a few out loud but feel myself on the verge of tears, so I don’t.
We ride on for a while and join the Schipdonkkanal for some easy riding through the fields. There are cows and donkeys and potatoes on the one side and long rows of old trees on the other.
We stop for early lunch in a town called Lovendegem, which seems to have been put up in the 1980s as a community for upper-middle class retirees, folks on a Good Pension. Apart from the church there are no old buildings anywhere, only brick and tile abutting perfectly laid paving-stone sidewalks. It’s incongruous; I’m used to stone villages with bad roads laid out 700 years ago.
I spy a group of middle aged men in pastel-coloured button downs drinking beers, so I figure it’s a safe bet to start drinking at 11am on a Sunday in Belgium. I pick a name I don’t recognise off the beer list: Fourchette. Imagine my utter humiliation when the beer comes out in a long-stem red wine glass; delicate logotype on the side and a whiff of 30-year-old eau de parfum and baby powder in its wake. I drink it slowly. Midway through lunch, a retired couple walk in and the woman comes over to ask me what I’m drinking (in Dutch-accented French: a first). Then she turns to the waitress and gives her the old “I’ll have what he’s having”. My mortification is complete. Joke’s on her though because the lunch is delicious.
A bit of rain on the paths around lunch; the smell of wet asphalt evokes memories of childhood. I know it’s called petrichor, but I think that word is for redditors ONLY ok.
We roll into Ghent under a threatening but ultimately toothless sky. Tourists crowd around the Gravensteen, a big castle from the 1100s with a rich history that we learn nearly nothing about, because we’re three market squares over getting waffles and you guessed it more beers. We both agree that Ghent is nicer than Bruges, though: more oriented towards the locals, less dominated by tourism.
Leave Ghent via the F4 cycleway, following the railway on a long, flat, perfectly straight course. The smooth, even surface of the path makes our wheels sing, a high hum like a glass harmonica. A few trains pass while we go. We eat up the miles, making great time towards Sint-Niklaas even with a break for stretches along the way.
I’m a bit queasy for some reason by the time we get to town, so we get an inoffensive dinner at an Asian fusion place and look with awe on the massive works being undertaken on the Grote Markt, the largest market square in Belgium. Photos of the market from before the works started indicate that it was a bit of a grim spot, just a big empty paved space. I don’t envy the pavers.
Then up the road to our host for the night, a man who works for the city with a fantastic house: modern yet cosy, with a signature Belgian massive plate glass window. We chat for a bit about politics and work and the Dutch language, and then we turn in early for bed.