Travel to Flanders, France

Myth: Flanders is flat and makes for easy cycling

Mythbuster: Flanders is not flat but it makes for a great motorhome tour with bikes on the back. The north may be hilly, but the south of Flanders is indeed very flat, the sort of place you would never ever need a spirit level, and the lovely, gentle countryside makes cycling there a real pleasure

How it all started

Having wearily pushed our three-geared bikes up some of the steepest hills they’ve ever encountered, we know Flanders is not flat now. Before covid we read a newspaper article about cycling in Flanders.

Flanders had identified all minor roads suitable for safe cycling and endowed every junction with a number. Each junction had become a point de nœud (node-point) bearing its number and having arrows indicating the direction to the next numbered point, something similar to the system in Holland. It sounded perfect for our little Bromptons.

Friendly welcome

We sent for the newly devised cycling map (Réseau Points-Noeuds Vélo: Vallée de la Lys & Monts de Flandre) and when it returned, accompanied by an assortment of freebies like saddle covers and map clips, we knew we were going to be very welcome. As it turned out, that was an understatement! This map cannot be obtained in the UK, but you can get it from all Flanders tourist offices and bookshops or buy for €8 from Nord Tourisme.

Once we had stocked up at one of those magnificent French supermarkets (oh, the vegetables!) and secured ourselves a campsite, we were off to Tourist Information in the nearest town of Hazebrouck.

We hadn’t reckoned on the reception! Really, we’d come to cycle? How fantastic! Had we got our bikes with us? (No, they were in the ’van down the road.) Never mind, we must still have our photos taken in front of the cycling map of Flanders.

Motorhoming away from it all

We’d already noticed there were no other British cars in Hazebrouck. Flanders seems to have remained below the tourist radar, still the sort of place everyone passes through quickly, on their way to somewhere else.

Our campsite continued the theme. Admittedly there were few motorhomes, mostly statics, but there was not a Brit in sight, and no one spoke English.

Everyone was very friendly – the madame in charge was lovely and, when I couldn’t understand her rapid cascade of words, she just upped the volume. We were definitely off the beaten track.

Cycle route 1: A little detour by numbers

Our first expedition didn’t exactly cover us in glory inasmuch as we tried to do a short circuit from our campsite and, having wrongly identified its position on the map, we spent the first hour going up and down the road outside searching for the appropriate turning and node- point.

Once we’d got the hang of it, though, there was no stopping us. We pursued those numbers relentlessly around the local byways, and it was fun.

Cycle route 2: River Lys

We followed one of the recommended circuits, taking in the River Lys and the forest. Our cycling map marked suitable parking places, and this one was idyllic, right beside a free aire for ’vans on the riverside in the village of Saint-Venant. Just one British ’van was there among the French.

The ride along the river towpath was a dream, with not a ripple in the smooth Tarmac. Things got tougher in the forest, where the track was quite a bit rougher, and the resident flying insects took no time in homing in on our chosen lunch spot.

The compensation for this was a roe deer, which emerged from the trees and stared at us for a few seconds before crashing off into the forest again – and later, a great egret, which rose from the marshy land on the forest edge.

Cycle route 3: Hilly north

We’d passed up on Cassel, but to do justice to Flanders, we still felt we needed to tackle some of the hilly north by bike. Another of our map’s recommended circuits took in the summits to the east of Cassel, and with a bit of tweaking, we thought we could manage it. Parking was once again easy – everywhere we went there seemed to be lots of space and no height barriers.

Pushing up the hills and then coasting down them, we enjoyed what was the most wonderful ride of the holiday admiring the haymaking in the fields, the ripening crops of corn and the tall stands of hops, the village of Boeschepe’s ancient windmill and viewpoints all along the way made it well worth the effort.

At our final stop at the estaminet (not a very traditional one this time) on the Mont des Cats we sat outside watching the same cyclists puffing up the hill beside us time after time. More thoughts of the Tour de France! Across the road, the Trappist monastery was selling the monks’ own produce – beer, and of course, cheese. We loaded our panniers – it was all downhill from there!

Later we called in at the town of Bailleul, reading that its steeple had World Heritage status. Parking in the central square, we were staggered by the architecture. In the countryside we had enjoyed those ‘chequered’ houses with their gambrel (two-sloped) roofs, but here the architects had had a field day.

Bailleul was completely destroyed in the First World War and, in reconstructing it, every known Flemish Renaissance characteristic had been used – stepped and arched gables, heavy mullioned windows, raised motifs, and more, all decked in bright tasteful colours. Sadly, it wasn’t possible to go up that belfry, but it was pretty handsome all the same.

Memorials

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row ....

Well, the poppies were not much in evidence when we were there – we saw just a few breaking through on the edges of the fields. But the rows of crosses are there, in military cemeteries. Of course, Flanders is a borderland, particularly ravaged by the First World War, and too much blood was spilled there for it ever to be forgotten.

The war cemeteries are for the most part in the south of Flanders, and one of the recommended routes took us out there. It was a reminder that this was a world war – we passed an Indian memorial inscribed with 4,700 names and a vast Portuguese cemetery among others.

Most poignant and most beautiful was a tiny British cemetery in the corner of a field in the village of Neuve-Chapelle, where the handful of white headstones glowed in the sunshine amid beds of blood-red roses.

In another place we were moved by the number of unknown graves inscribed ‘A Soldier of the Great War’, followed by Rudyard Kipling’s well-chosen phrase ‘Known unto God’.

Look for the friterie

(Photo courtesy of Pixabay)

We noticed a friterie van parked at the end of a short path leading from a village church. The congregation were just leaving – and clearly this was a very acceptable alternative to the traditional Sunday lunch!

Every Flanders village or town appeared to have a friterie in its car park (and sometimes more than one), and I have to say, we took advantage of our local enterprise a few times.

Taking to the water

One day we ventured a few miles out of the area that would normally call itself Flanders. To the north and east of St Omer is the Audomarois, a vast area of market gardening, where canals dug by monks hundreds of years ago run between acres of artichokes, cauliflowers, leeks and the rest.

A boat ride here seemed appealing, and we stumbled across a family boat-building business that also hired out canoes and conducted the odd boat trip – although, on that hot day, it did seem that perhaps most of their profits were coming from the large beer tent alongside.

Getting 12 people into a traditional flat-bottomed wooden boat proved an interesting experience, but the subsequent silent electrically driven glide through the vegetable fields with a guide who spoke perfect English (even though we were the only Brits around) was a real treat.

Heading to the hills

The one part of Flanders that does seem to attract visitors is the hilly north, the area called the Monts des Flandres.

The gem here is the wonderful town of Cassel, perched atop the highest hill in the region. At 176m, that doesn’t amount to very much, but the winding road up to Cassel is very steep, and is obviously used as a practice ground by Flanders’ abundant Tour de France hopefuls.

Discretion being the better part of valour, we thought it wiser to tackle Cassel by ’van rather than by bike. The huge cobbled square at its summit didn’t look too bike-friendly, either, although those racing bikes were impressively managing to skim across it – and apparently the Tour de France would be flying over the cobbles on 5 July. Cartoon-like paintings on every shop window announced the forthcoming event.

Above Cassel’s cobbled square, on its highest point, stands an old wooden windmill and, around its feet, orientation tables look over the red roofs to pick out every feature on the plains stretching below. It was a good place to stop for lunch, and that put us in mind of the several cheese farms in the area that – according to a brochure we’d picked up – were offering demonstrations at weekends.

The ones we visited seemed more interested in sales than demonstrations and, in the last old farm, in a yard teeming with dogs and children, we ended up paying €12 for a small ball of cheese. Whyever did we do that, we thought when we came out – until we tasted that cheese. Heaven!

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