Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent and Beffroi de Bergues

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent

   The Great Béguinage of Sint-Amandsberg looks like a small walled town of its own, tucked into a residential suburb just east of the centre of Ghent. When the city expanded in the 1870s and the old béguinage of St Elisabeth was in the way, the beguines, lay religious women who lived in community without taking permanent vows, moved here to a new complex of neo-Gothic houses, convents and a church, all laid out around streets, squares and gardens behind a wall and gate. The move was funded by the Duke of Arenberg, and the whole place was finished in just a few years. It is one of the thirteen Flemish Béguinages on the UNESCO list since 1998, and although the beguines are gone, the houses are still lived in, and the atmosphere is calm and quiet.

   Read the complete Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent is where the day begins. Next is Stadhuis.

2. 2. Stadhuis

   Bruges is half an hour north, and the two make a good pairing, but Roeselare deserves to be taken on its own terms: a working town of some fifty-six thousand people, built on textiles, food processing and trade, with a town hall on its market square that anchors the centre. Like most Flemish towns, Roeselare grew around a market and a civic building that announced the burghers' independence from lords and bishops, and the tradition of the town hall as the symbol of local self-government is still very much alive here.

   Read the complete Stadhuis write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Stadhuis comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de Bergues.

3. 3. Beffroi de Bergues

   Bergues found a new kind of fame in 2008, when the comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, filmed here, became one of the most successful French films of all time, and suddenly the whole country wanted to see the town where a postman from the south is exiled to the cold north and ends up falling in love with it. The film's best-known scenes include the belfry, from which the hero rings the carillon, and the town still welcomes visitors who come in search of the locations. But Bergues was a proud place long before cinema arrived. It is a small fortified town in French Flanders, surrounded by ramparts and canals, with fortifications improved by Vauban in the seventeenth century.

   Read the complete Beffroi de Bergues write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 127 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de Bergues. Next is back through Stadhuis.

4. 4. back through Stadhuis

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Stadhuis write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Stadhuis, late in the day. Next is Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent.

5. 5. Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent. That is the ride.