Turnhout lies in the Kempen, the sandy, wooded heath of northern Belgium, only a few kilometres from the Dutch border, and the beguinage here is a small village within the town, with brick houses, a church and quiet courtyards behind a wall. The city has nearly forty thousand people, and the beguinage is about half a kilometre from the centre. It is one of thirteen Flemish beguinages inscribed by UNESCO in 1998.
The beguines were communities of lay women who lived a religious life without taking permanent vows, and who earned their living by weaving, nursing and teaching. The movement began in the Low Countries in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in Flanders it grew into walled enclosures with their own streets, churches, infirmaries and gardens. Turnhout's beguinage was founded in the thirteenth century, and the houses seen today mostly date from the seventeenth century, with stepped gables and low doorways. The last beguines died out over the twentieth century, but the buildings survive, and many are now used as homes and small museums. You can wander in freely, and the enclosed feeling, with bells in the church tower, is special.
Turnhout has its own claim to fame as the capital of playing cards. The industry began in the nineteenth century, and a long-standing printing company turned the town into a world supplier of cards, and a museum dedicated to them is in the centre. The Kempen to the north is a land of pine woods, heaths, fens and small lakes, with good cycling routes, and just across the border Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau form a bizarre tangle of Belgian and Dutch enclaves, with the border running through shops and houses.
For a rider, the Kempen is flat and rather uniform, but the country roads between woods and fields are quiet, well surfaced and run in long straight lines with sudden bends at the old farms. Speed limits are strict, and cameras and radar traps are common. Winter days are grey and rainy, and the best months are May to September. Turnhout has everything, with filling stations on the ring road, bakeries, and cafes serving Belgian beer, frites and waffles. The town has several breweries nearby, and a Trappist ale is brewed at Westmalle, thirty minutes to the west.