Day 7 - Vlissengen to Westkappel

It's been a long and hard few days on my feet. After Bruges I walked along the beach out of Breslane and up the coast to Blankenberg. Unfortunately, when I got there I discovered that Zeebrugge docks was in the way, so I walked through it, taking a bit of an industrial detour, eventually making it to Knokke, where I stayed the night.

Not much to write home about in Knokke, I slept behind a petrol station, and the cars kept me up a bit, but at least I could buy some hot coffee in the morning.

The next day I'm ashamed to say I hopped on a bus over the Dutch border. In mitigation it was drizzling, and the coastal route appears to take me through a marsh. I hopped off the bus ASAP though, and began walking through the beautiful Dutch countryside. Looking for a place to camp I tried a few places, but they were all ridiculously expensive (37€ for a place to put a tent up?!). I walked into Breskens to try and find a campsite there, but managed to get directed to a caravan sales park, which looked exactly like a campsite from a distance. Seething with tiredness I decided "sod Breskens", and got the ferry to Vlissengen.

Vlissengen was absolutely lovely. The campsite was nice and cheap, the sun was shining, there was a cooling breeze, and the coffee shops were doing a roaring trade. Much pacified I went to bed.

This morning I got up and continued trekking down the coast, eventually stopping in Westkappel. I'm camping in what essentially is some old lady's garden, but to her credit she has excellent wifi coverage. Westkappel is pretty cool - it was one of the first places stormed by the allies in 1944 so there's ww2 stuff rusting everywhere. I had lunch sitting on top of a Sherman tank.

Tomorrow I'm going to head north, and see if pedestrians can get over the huge bridge to the north of me...

Day 4 - Bruges

Am writing this sitting next to the bell tower in the centre of Bruges. Wow, this city is amazing. There are so many medieval buildings preserved intact that almost everywhere has some interesting piece of architecture. It's a lovely sunny day at the moment, and after I've had some lunch I'll head to the park and do a bit of reading, or maybe check out one of the art galleries if it isn't overly pricey.

Still staying at Camp Astrid at the moment, but will continue to wind my way up the coast tomorrow morning. I'll see if I can make it to somewhere near Knokke, or maybe Zeebrugge.

Am a bit tired, sore and bugbitten, but in pretty good spirits still. I am however getting a bit tired of sleeping in a tent. Can't wait to spend my first night in a bed.

Day 3 - Dunkirk - Oostende

Hello again to everyone, I'm writing this from an internet cafe in Oostende, Belgium.  Also I'm typing this on a damn azerty keyboard, so if there's some typos that's why.

Things are going very well on the trip so far, although my legs and feet are horribly achy, and with some blisters.  I'm quite glad to be out of France to be honest, the northeast of the country is a bit of a dump - Nazi graffiti everywhere and loads of campaign pictures of Marine Le Pen.  I guess its probably something to do with all the people trying to sneak through the ports.  Anyway, it's a pretty depressing environment.  Dunkirk in particular was very bleak, and mysteriously the streets seemed to be empty the whole time I was there.  

Fortunately the campsite was nice, and I had a very nice time watching the sun set over Dunkirk bay.

This morning I got up early and set off down the coast - walking qlong the hard sands for about 15 miles or so until I was in Belgium.  The beach was great - big old concrete machine gun bunkers poking out of the ground, quite post apocalyptic. Belgium is much nicer thankfully, everyone's polite, speqks English and is very helpful.  Also, after the blitzed out postwar qrchitecture of Dunkirk, Oostende is lovely - lots of old buildings.  I'm camped just outside the town, in a place called Camping Astrid.

After I got there this afternoon, I took a dip in the sea, very refreshing.  Now I'm planning the next few days - I think off to Bruges tomorrow, stay there for 2 nights and move on.  More updates to come, when I find a keyboard that has its As and Zs etc in the right places.