Tours in Belgium

Belgium is a country you read at street level. A tram bell in Brussels, the smell of frying potatoes drifting from a corner stand, a brick gable leaning slightly out over a canal in Flanders. Nothing here is very far from anything else, which is the trick of it. You can have breakfast in one city and be arguing about beer in another before the afternoon is done.

Start in Flanders, where the flat land does a lot of work. Bruges is the one everyone has heard of, and the centre is as pretty as the photographs suggest. The trick is to leave it. Ride out past the windmills along the green edge of the old town, follow the canal, and within a short time the cobbles give way to polder, long straight lines of poplars and open sky. This is the road to Damme, a quiet little town with a market square made for sitting down, a tower you can sometimes climb, and a beer waiting once you have earned it. It feels like a different country from the crowds in Bruges, and it is a gentle ride, not a hard one.

Elsewhere, Ghent and Antwerp each have their own temper. Ghent is all canals, student bikes and old guild houses along the water. Antwerp is a port city with a fashion habit and a station you should walk into just to look up. Brussels has the Grand Place, which really is as good as people say, along with comics painted on walls and a serious appetite for waffles, chocolate and mussels. South, the Ardennes are wooded valleys and slow rivers, and Wallonia has its own cities, castles and cheeses.

Our tour in Belgium is the Bruges and Damme ride, led by a licensed local guide. If you want something else, a walk through Brussels, a day in Ghent, a food trip in Antwerp, ask. A local guide can build it with you.