The Last of Belgium and a Bit of Britain

Position: 51°07’46.4″N 2°45’05.3″E

Never a truer word was spoken than those by that immortal wag Anonymous who once quipped, “Cruising is the art of repairing your boat in exotic places.” Some folks might not see Belgium as ‘exotic’, and with them we would heartily disagree.

In European terms, Belgium is a relatively new country. In its way it is a classic old-world amalgamation of sub-cultures once, long ago, defined by its landed gentry (dukes, princes, etc.) as much as by its territory. Over the centuries the Prussians, Austrians, Germans, Vikings, French, Dutch and Spanish have all had a go at annexing parts of the country. Almost invariably such incursions were met with fierce and wily resistance. This layering of external influences combined with Belgium’s own 19th century colonial ambitions makes for a lively combination of creative arts and ancient traditions which propel the country forward while keeping its local communities rooted.

Crafty Arts

Before we set out on our epic road trip (see latest posts), we asked the harbour agent for recommendations on places to visit. “Of course”, she said, “there are the usual places like Bruges and Ghent and Antwerp. But, I really like Kortrijk. It’s not as touristy and there’s an interesting art museum there that’s worth visiting.” She was right.

The Abbey Museum of visual arts is housed in a restored and repurposed abbey and contains small but significant collections of avant-garde art shown on a temporary basis. Rinus Van de Velde is a Belgian artist who works with all kinds of media. He claims to be lazy and disinterested in the world, but the large hall of his works included painted cardboard furniture, paintings and charcoal drawings belie his words. Unlike Italy’s Palazzo Maffei, where sitting on the furniture can gain you global notoriety, Rinus invites you into his living room and to sit down and relax on his surprisingly comfortable chairs. If we had anywhere to store them, I would love to own a couple of pieces of his artwork.

Tintin

Our other artsy excursion was a pilgrimage to the Hergé Museum in Louvain-la-Neuve. Georges Remi (his initials reversed are Her-gé) first drew his most famous character, Tintin, in 1930, and his most popular, Captain Haddock, in 1941. The museum did a decent job addressing some of the more problematic parts of Georges Remi’s life. Much of his early work bore the hallmarks of a young man with a narrow, often racist world view. Over the years, he grew much more tolerant and empathetic. Something the exhibition was at pains to highlight.

Having forever aspired to master the clean lines and balance of detail with clarity in the style of Hergé, a great deal of the fun was seeing how his drawings were developed and readied for print. On the other hand, discovering his real-life preference for cats over dogs was a little disappointing. Especially given Milou’s prominent role in Tintin’s adventures. I met Georges Remi at a book signing in Oxford a few years before he died. He signed a copy of his last complete work, the political satire Tintin and the Picaros, for me. I still have it safely stored away.

Nieuwpoort

Nieuwpoort’s Vlaamse Yachthaven is one of northern Europe’s largest marinas. It is run by friendly, helpful, competent folks. On our way up to the Baltic a couple of years ago we stopped overnight to check back into the EU. This time we pulled in to get Aleta’s propellor replaced.

Blankenberg, about 25 nautical miles up the coast, also has a large marina, but fewer repair facilities. That translates to longer lead times and even greater uncertainty as to when and how repairs would get completed. In short order Aleta was hauled, the prop ordered, and we hit the road. For only as long as our consciences would allow. After all, touristing around is one thing boat maintenance won’t wait for. Seeing as Aleta was ‘on the hard’, her punch list long, and two chandleries within a quarter of a mile, we settled in for a couple of weeks of chores.

What’s Mine is Chores

Sanding and varnishing the cockpit table and the weatherboards only left the companionway doors looking even sorrier for themselves. They are on the list for next time. Oiling the steering hardware and inspecting the quadrant wires seemed prudent. Removing the compass made servicing the binnacle easier. Edson has manufactured cast aluminium binnacles for all kinds of sailboats for decades. It’s one of those brands that’s hard to go wrong with. But at some point, the powder coating on ours had failed and the tiniest cracks had let salt in where it built up and blistered like a scrofulous bilge rat.

Nothing a bit of elbow grease and plastic scrapers couldn’t take care of. That and three coats of metal paint made things a whole lot prettier. Next time she’s laid up for a spell, I’ll take the whole thing off, soda blast it and have it powder-coated all over again. Assuming such services are available. Carol meantime cleaned and oiled the woodwork below decks, and I moved on to polishing the hull. With summer temperatures rising into the 90sF, I woke at sunrise to beat the heat and to apply the polish before it dried out too quickly.

Patience

Many boat owners enjoy maintenance work. They get satisfaction from problem solving, learning how things go together and putting them back better than they were before. I am not one of them. My lack of mechanical skills and patience is legendary. Really. Ask anyone.

My threshold for voluntarily delving into complex repairs is when I deem there to be no downside risk. The point at which I can’t possibly make things worse and when there is no professional alternative. Of course, when I do fix things and they function appropriately, I get the same dopamine rush the fix-it guys get all the time. So, it’s not all bad.

Six hours a day of solid work was about as much patience as we could muster. Taking off for exploratory walks around town broke up the monotony and helped stretch our cramping muscles. As we walked, our impressions of Nieuwpoort started changing. Like many places on the Belgian coast an area of modern construction fronts the white sandy beaches. Most of it was built in the past 30 years and is unremarkable (some might say ugly) glass and concrete tower blocks. Still, holiday-makers crowd in and there are plenty of restaurants and bars to serve them. The old part of Nieuwpoort is quieter. Resurrected from the rubble of two world wars, the city had enough photos of life in the 19^th century it kept the charm of its narrow streets with their decorative yellow brick buildings.

Karin and Carl

Carol booked us into a beautiful three-bedroom house a hundred metres from the market square. Our hosts Carl and Karin couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful. After a few days, we arranged to meet with them at a pub around the corner. Over glasses of Picon and lemonade, we chatted about life under sail, life as grandparents, the history of Nieuwpoort and Carl’s motorcycling adventures in Algeria 30 years ago.

They are kindred spirits. I made a mental note to invite Carl on every motorcycle adventure I plan in the future. That despite Karin’s admonishment that Carl can only buy another motorcycle when she doesn’t love him anymore. She said it with a smile that made me understand she was quite serious.

Old Blighty

Given the progress we made, we took another break for a quick trip to the UK to visit my daughter Katie and son-in-law Aron in Bristol and my elder sister Victoria in Salisbury. (They are all in fine fettle. Thanks for asking!) Transitioning from driving on the right to driving on the left in our Brussels-rented Dacia Sandero (inexplicably Europe’s top selling car in 2024) proved easier than expected. Once you shift to the other side of the road, driving becomes a team sport. A bit like rallying, your front passenger is now your co-pilot making important decisions about when to overtake and when to slow down. Driving on the left also makes hugging the verges easier. Useful when you stare down a huge tractor on a narrow one-lane country road.

That aside, Britain has lost more than some of its mojo. Everyone seemed down in the dumps, including our immigration officer at the Channel Tunnel. “Cool Britannia” ended 25 years ago, and fifteen years of austerity and housing inflation has worn heavily on the British joie de vivre. Brexit was the most recent kick in the pants and, like the morning after a night out on Sangria and vodka, far fewer people now think it was a good idea.

Stonehenge is a stone’s throw from Salisbury and since Carol had never been in it IRL, we found a hike that would get us within shouting distance. One of the great things in British common law is access to private land for hiking. I was, therefore, a bit surprised how many ‘No Trespassing’ signs we saw along our route. Clearly attitudes, if not the law, are changing.

[Greater] West Flanders

The Chunnel still takes less than an hour and we reemerged in Calais on the ‘right’ side of the road ready for another historical detour through French occupied West Flanders – a bit of Flemish territory that should probably be Belgian but remains under French control. The small city of Bergues with its steep walls and ancient canals earned it the moniker of ‘The Bruges of the South’. In fairness it is a small sleepy place with more than its fair share of character and good restaurants.

Stopping for a coffee a few kilometres away in the city of Hondschoote gave us another perspective on how this region’s fortunes ebbed and flowed over the years. Four hundred years ago it was a city of 200,000 cloth makers and run by a pirate king. Churches invariably give you clues to a town’s historical importance. If a quiet backwater has one café open at 10AM and all the locals are drinking Duvel when there’s a cathedral-sized church across the road, you can safely assume the town has a rich history.

Halfway between Bergues and Nieuwpoort you’ll find the Belgian city of Veurne with its magnificent 16^th century market square. It was market day when we arrived, making it all the more fun. Most of this area fell under the Spanish branch of the Hapsburgs in the middle 1500s and was kicked around by tyrants and kings for the next couple of centuries. Conflicts that shaped the region, like the Eighty Years War and the War of the Spanish Succession, are generally footnotes in US high school history lessons, if they are mentioned at all.

An accessible and attractive area, this region it is overlooked by mainstream tour operators. My suspicion is folks embark or disembark in Calais or Dunkirk and immediately head elsewhere – in a hurry. That’s too bad. There’s a lot to see and it’s worth a stopover. More than once, we wished we were on bikes so we could take things a little more slowly.

Revisionist History

After a month in Nieuwpoort we completely revised our opinions of it. The old city centre has wonderful pubs and restaurants and the best fishmongers anywhere. The countryside stretches out for miles, crisscrossed by dijks, canals and footpaths. White sand beaches buffer the North Sea and cooling breezes moderate summer’s heat. If you go, stay in one of Karin and Carl’s rental homes in the heart of the old town. Then rent a bike and explore a couple thousand years of history right under your pedals.

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