London to The Hague via Dunkirk and Dover, cycling - Day 7, Ghent to Bruges

London-Gillingham-Dover-Dunkirk-Ieper (Ypres)-Ghent-Bruges-The Hague-London
GPS route (.gpx) available here.

From, memory, the route to Bruges was almost all along canal paths, so easy riding. It was very picturesque, just like one expects western Europe to be in summer. It was interesting to watch some of the cargo traffic down the canals, just to see what they were carrying. Most of it looked like waste. Maybe there was some grain. Most of the boat operators carried their car with them on the top of the boat.

Once again, the Flemish countryside was really nice, and the houses in the country villages were really nice too.

I stayed in a camping site that had caravans so it was actually a caravan park. Somebody ought to point out to the continentals that camping refers to camping, not caravanning. Anyway, there was a rat in the caravan park creeping around near my tent, which was ok because it wasn’t getting into my tent. It was more likely to sneak into one of the tents parked within 1 metre of mine. They really like to cram in the tents in this ‘camping’ place.

However, the showers were the best of all the places I stayed at (except the ferry, but more to come late about the ferry).

A few highlights of Bruges:

Bruges boasts a short list of attractions... the Friets museum, and the choco story museum where I learnt about the life story of chocolate, and a church that claims to have a vial of Jesus blood. The bad thing about the vial church was that it was tucked in a corner of the main square, and there was a delivery van in front of it so one couldn’t take a good picture.

To get to see the vial of blood you had to  line up, and then you climbed up some steps on to a platform where there was a lady sitting behind it so no one steals it. It was pretty disgusting. Imagine blood with lots of solidified fat in little droplets like from bacon or sausages or a roast. And all the droplets were clumping together at one end of the vial in a fatty beige mass. It must have been coagulated proteins or something. If my calculations are correct, it would be about 2013 years old if it’s real. It almost made me vomit but I felt so much pity for the lady who had to sit behind it all day protecting it and looking at it. It was so disgusting.

This thing may not actually be Jesus blood. Somebody might just have whispered that it was the blood of Jesus during communion, and someone kept it one day and it developed from there as Chinese whispers.

Bruges: