An easy hour and a half cycle ride (each way) out of busy Bruges and over the bucolic, flat as a pancake Belgian border into the Netherlands proved a welcome respite from summer season masses during a few days stay in the picturesque medieval city.
After three or four miles of comfortable peddling on a bike route alongside the Napoleancanal that connects a string of Flemish port towns, windmills and cafes of 15th Century Damme called for a first pit-stop for coffee and water and a walk around its lovely little town center.
Damme was an important town in the medieval period, serving as the outer harbor for Bruges in its trading heyday as the New York of its era, ships loaded and unloaded their cargo until 1520, at which point its inlet silted over.
Sluis, the last harbor for Bruges, is also cut off from the sea, nowadays. It was established as a town in 1290. In 1382, the Count of Flanders, Louis Van Male fortified the town with a castle that survived until 1820. Walls that encircled the entire town have long since crumbled, but there remains a strong sense of historical identity when approaching this Flemish community from surrounding countryside, today.
In the late 18th century, Damme had various waterways and canals running alongside each other, but navigation was practically impossible. The Bruges-Damme-Sluis route was been non-navigable for many years.
French warlord Napoléon Bonaparte, unable to travel in the North Sea, was determined to link Dunkirk and Antwerp, his two naval ports.
It was Napoleon's idea to construct a canal to connect Bruges with Damme and Sluis. Spanish prisoners-of-war began initial digging in 1812.
One of the most refreshing aspects of my family's group cycle ride was moments of complete solitude in this quiet countryside. Cycle routes sometimes extended into regular roadways. Mostly, it was other family groups and people of all ages peddling along in each direction, many for practical transportation and in everyday clothes, hardly a tour-de-France cycling kit in sight.
After a Flemish lunch in Sluis and a wander through its flower basket bedecked town center, there wasn't an awful lot to keep us from heading back along the scenic canal (where we spotted several wild water long distance swimmers) for evening time in beautiful Bruges.
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