Wednesday 2 August 1995
As we had hoped, it turned out to be a beautiful sunny morning and we decided to skip breakfast so that we could make an early start on our planned tour of the island. We walked back into town and hired a couple of bikes from a small shop. The bikes were traditional single-speed Dutch roadsters with back-pedal braking which took a little while to get used to. The bikes were very heavy and it was a quite a struggle getting them up even the most modest of inclines but we weren't too worried about that as the island was perfect for cycling and there were plenty of off-road routes marked on the map for us to explore.

We set off in a westerly direction following the dyked shore which faced the shallows of the Wadden Sea, the stretch of water that lies between the Frisian Islands and mainland Europe. The island did not boast any spectacular scenery but it was alluring in a more subtle way. There were plenty of sheep around and the small settlements strung along the road were dotted with attractive cottages and the occasional small church. There was also a windmill in the hamlet of Formerum which gave the place a nice Dutch feel as did the local man that we passed who I noticed was wearing clogs. 

At Oosterend we stopped at a bar called De Boschplaat where we enjoyed a beer and a toasted cheese baguette which were both very pleasant. We sat outside the bar watching cyclists ride past, most of whom were heading in the direction of the beach. Whilst sitting there I overheard a couple of people speaking what I assumed was Frisian which apparently is the closet language to English although it sounded totally incomprehensible to me! It was beginning to warm up by now so we jumped back onto our bikes and followed the cycle path towards the North Sea shore. We cycled as far as the path would take us and then dumped our bikes next to the dozens of others that were parked along the edge of the dunes that spread out in front of us.

The dunes were so high that we couldn't see the sea until we clambered to the top of them which was hard work given the deep sand shifting underneath our feet. However, when we finally made it down to the beach we were greeted with the most impressive expanse of sand I had ever seen. The flat, golden vista went as far as the eye could see, vanishing in either direction into an incandescent haze on the horizon. Despite all the bikes that were left by the dunes, all the people on the beach were easily absorbed within this vast open space. Some people had walked further east along the shore, finding a little more solitude where they could revel in the liberty afforded to them by their uninhibited nakedness. This really felt like the perfect place to escape the tribulations of everyday life. Anxious to get into the water, I stripped off and ran straight into the shallows. I had to go quite a way out before the water even got as far as waist high but I didn't mind because the water was crystal clear and almost luxuriously warm. It was difficult to believe that I was actually bathing in the North Sea but here I was on about the same line of latitude as Grimsby thinking that I was actually in the Caribbean!

We stayed on the beach for a couple of hours, soaking up the rays of the sun and cooling down in the water but then it was time to mount our trusty roadsters and continue our journey around the island. The north of the island contrasted quite dramatically with the residential and agricultural land of the south. We followed the cycle path through aromatic woods and purple heaths and along the way we passed a couple of small lakes whose pure blue water rippled gently in the breeze. This really was a special place. The further west we headed the busier our car-free cycle route became and it wasn't long before we once again reached the outskirts of West Terschelling.

Just outside the town we came across a small cemetery consisting of a simple arrangement of Commonwealth war graves. As always in such places, the tranquillity of the surroundings allowed us time and space to pause for thought and ponder the fate of the young Royal Air Force personnel who perished over the island during the war. Many of the graves had no names inscribed upon them, the inscription simply stating that they were 'known unto God' but I felt that if they were to be remembered anywhere then I couldn't think of a better place than this. We trundled back into the town and dropped the bikes off at the hire shop and then walked around soaking up the early evening ambience of the port as people returned from the beaches and started to wind-down with a few drinks on their yachts.

We walked down towards the sandy spit by the harbour where there was a statue of a woman, dressed in layers of clothing to protect her against the elements, looking forlornly out to sea waiting for husband to return home. I suspected that many of the fisherman and sailors of this island never did. Nearby, I saw a poster advertising a wind-yachting regatta which was to be held along the sand flats in October. It used to be a case of facing the elements simply to survive in this place, now people came here to revel in them for the simple purpose of thrill seeking. I suppose in the old days those thrills came for free which probably just went to show how lacklustre our late twentieth century lives had really become. With such profound thoughts in mind, we headed down to the pub where we once again savoured our surroundings around a miniature glass of very frothy beer.

Thursday 3 August 1995
We'd only booked two nights at the campsite so sadly it was time for us leave Terschelling. We wanted to beat the rush to get off the island so we got up at six to catch the first ferry back onto the mainland. It was a long walk back to the harbour with our backpacks on but the morning light illuminated our route quite beautifully. There weren't many people about apart from one or two cyclists returning from the baker with the first bread of the day. Unlike on our voyage to the island, the ferry was fairly empty this time. We went up on deck to see the island begin to come to life just as its flat form faded into the distance. At that point we wished we had planned to stay longer but we were almost at the end of our second week so we really had to start thinking about heading for home.

We went to the café and had a cheese roll and some coffee and watched the mainland come into view as the ferry manoeuvred through the narrow channels that had been carved through the shallows. Once ashore we boarded the bright yellow holiday 'fun' train for Leeuwarden where a connection for Amsterdam would be waiting. Heading north showed us there was much more to the Netherlands than just Amsterdam and the Randstad and we felt sad to have left that behind. It only took a couple of hours to reach Amsterdam where we changed onto the Brussels express although this time we only went just over the border to Antwerp where we planned to spend the last two nights of our trip.

In some ways it felt good to be back in Belgium, the prospect of some decent beer was reason enough to be here and Antwerp was famed for its lively social life so this seemed as good a place as any to wrap things up. The most striking thing about getting off at Antwerp Centraal Station was the station itself, a mixture of baroque and gothic styles which combined to lend the space a cathedral-like grandeur. Antwerp itself lacked the finesse of Bruges and Ghent and this became obvious when we caught a tram (which ran as a Metro train through the city centre) out to the Vogelzang campsite a few miles away. Luckily the campsite was right on the tram route which saved us a walk when we got off but its facilities were very basic, especially compared to the campsite in Ghent. The ground itself was very dusty and the trees didn't look too healthy either. There weren't many people around apart from a group of South American panpipe players who were probably taking a break from busking in the city centre. I wondered how much money a group like that could really hope to make here and whether it was really worth the effort of coming all the way from somewhere like Ecuador to play on the streets of Belgium. The fact that they were staying at this campsite suggested to me that their rewards were pretty meagre.

I decided to take a shower as it had been a long hot journey from Terschelling but one of the shower blocks was flooded whilst the other reminded me of a cattle shed. I did however just manage to refresh myself enough under a slow drip of water to be able to spend an evening out on the town. We caught the tram back to the city centre and it was fun sitting at the front of the carriage as the line dipped underground and passed through stations that looked as though they were built for a much grander public transport system than this. We got off at Groenplaats station and walked the short distance past the gothic cathedral towards the Grote Markt which was lined with an attractive selection of bars and restaurants. The square had a lively atmosphere with fire-eaters and jugglers doing their stuff to appreciative applause from passers-by.

We were feeling a bit peckish by now, especially seeing that I'd only had a chopped ham sandwich on the train down from Holland that day (yes, I still had about six tins of the stuff left over from Amsterdam!), so we decided to try out an exotic looking Egyptian restaurant situated on the corner of the square. We took a seat outside and watched the street entertainers ply their trade. The kebabs and falafels we ordered were delicious and they were served with some tasty humous, mint yoghurt dressing and chilli dips whilst the accompanying bread had a lovely freshly baked aroma. Of course it was nice to have a Belgium beer as well and I tried a tasty local brew called De Koninck which was served in a small stemmed glass known as a bolleke. Apparently the word is slang for ball which I suppose was really quite obvious! It was nice to have a proper restaurant meal after all the 'home-cooked' stuff we'd had over the last few days. We paid the relatively modest bill and then drifted back towards the bars on the Grote Markt where there was nothing better to do than enjoy a few more bollekes of beer. The city was beginning to liven up by now and there was quite a boisterous atmosphere in the pubs and out on the streets.

The ambience was a little like Amsterdam except livelier and grittier and the street artists, judging by some of their spectular tattoos and body-piercings, were from the more extreme end of the busking spectrum. There were some serious looking knifes and flaming torches being flung around which made for a good spectacle as the light faded. Eventually it was time to head back to the campsite which wasn't much of a late-night sitting around type of place so we just got our heads down as soon as we crawled back into our tent.

Friday 4 August 1995
Our last full day on the continent so we thought we'd spend it doing one final round of sightseeing. We had probably overdone the gothic cathedral and market square theme over the past two weeks and given the heat we could have benefited from a few more days on the beach at Terschelling. However, Antwerp still looked like it had plenty to offer so it would be silly to miss it. The guidebook described Antwerp as a lively cultural centre, preferable to Brussels in many ways, so we knew we couldn't go too far wrong here. Instead of sticking to any set walking tour we just drifted around the streets taking in the sights, sounds and smells of this interesting city. We started off our meanderings at the Grote Markt which bore plenty of similarities with most of the other main squares we'd already seen on this trip but it was still an impressive sight. As in Brussels there was a row of guildhouses flying the colourful flag of each guild and the step gables topping each building gave the square that distinctive Hanseatic feel. This was a town of merchants, a centre of trade and the buildings here were a reminder that less than a mile away most of the world's diamonds (the majority of which had been mined in South Africa) were being bought and sold by Antwerp's community of Hassidic Jews.

There was none of the hustle and bustle of that market in the square though, just tourists and city workers hanging out in bars, which just about summed up the appeal of Antwerp. In the centre of the square was a striking monument, the Brabo Fountain, which was a far more potent symbol of this city than the Mannekin Pis was for Brussels. The fountain was a sculpture of stones topped by a statue of Silvius Brabo whose legend was described in my Rough Guide. The statue showed Brabo in athletic pose throwing the dismembered hand of the giant Antigonus into the Scheldt, the major river that runs through Antwerp. Apparently Antigonus extracted tolls from passing ships and cut off the arms of anyone who refused to pay where the name Antwerp came from, the name literally him, that is until Brabo exacted his gruesome revenge. This according to my guidebook was meaning 'hand-throw'. Whatever the story, it was still a striking piece of public art and one which lent the square a real sense of flair.

By now I was beginning to warm to the feel of Antwerp, it had a rough-edged charm that set it aside from the other Flemish cities we had visited on this trip. If anything its feel was closer to that of Amsterdam except it didn't have so many tourists, especially drunken Brits, which in my book was a definitely a good thing. We made our way past the quaint Handschoenmarkt towards the cathedral. This was yet another spectacular example of the gothic style and our look inside revealed a huge nave surrounded by tombs, statues and four decorative paintings by Rubens. I felt that this cathedral perhaps lacked the lightness of St Baaf's in Ghent but the simple intensity of the surroundings made up for that. The cathedral was just as easy to admire from the outside, and I especially liked its ornate spire whose slender form elegantly reached towards the clear blue sky. At that point we took a break at a café where we enjoyed some ice-cream before making our way down to the waterside where we ambled around the small backstreets that surrounded the evocatively named Oude Koornmarkt.

Along the river there was plenty of movement and I noticed a couple of cargo ships being loaded outside the large industrial plants situated further down the river. This was still a busy working port and as in Rotterdam, a certain sense of seediness pervaded the area which was exacerbated by the red-light district where the attractions on offer were paraded in the windows of the each house. Back on the waterfront we enjoyed a wonderful view back across to the cathedral from the Pelgrimsstraat and it was there that we decided to end our sightseeing for the day and indeed for our trip. By that point we had taken in as much culture as we could possibly manage in two weeks so all that there was left to do was find a good restaurant to blow the rest of our cash on. It was turning into a beautiful evening and we found a funky looking place to eat called Facade where for the first time on this trip I indulged in the classic Belgian dish of mussels and chips which I washed down with yet another bolleke of De Koninck. A few more beers back at the Grote Markt drunk to a backdrop of fire-eaters, acrobats and street musicians rounded off our last evening on the continent in perfect style.

Saturday 6 August 1995
That melancholic end-of-trip feeling came this morning. Two weeks ago, I hadn't really known what to expect from these three small countries but they had all thrown up plenty of pleasant surprises along the way. The best thing about this trip was that many of the places we had come across seemed like our very own discoveries. I'd known a few people who had visited Amsterdam and maybe Brussels and Bruges before but they probably wouldn't have ever considered coming on a two week holiday to this region. It therefore felt good to have done something a little bit different from the mainstream. One thing about this region was that in terms of mileage we were actually still very close to home. It was easy enough to pick up Radio 5 or even Capital Gold on my radio (I even managed to get the Southall based Asian station, Sunrise Radio on one occasion!) but we still felt well away from home. As we packed up our tent for last time, I tuned into a local station which was playing some indigenous sounding 'hard house' dance music, a genre that had briefly put Belgium on the musical map about five years earlier.

We signed out of the campsite without breakfast and caught the tram to Centraal Station, once again enjoying the ride along Antwerp's curious Metro system. At the station we boarded a train for Ostend, retracing the route that we took in reverse just two weeks earlier. Back at Ostend we went straight on to the Sally Lines ferry and watched the swarm of beachgoers having fun in the sea as our boat sailed past them bound for England. As always there was plenty to reflect upon on the journey back and if there was anything that this trip had converted us to, it was the immeasurable joys of frites met mayo and Belgian beers, both of which we decided to sample for one last time in the Quiet Bar. Four hours later we were back in Ramsgate and we jumped onto a slam-door train bound for London Victoria after catching the shuttle bus from the harbour.

As always with such journeys a feeling of gloom accompanied the experience of being back in England, a feeling that was accentuated when a unrefined looking family joined the train at Margate. They sat opposite us for the rest of the trip, their toothy grins providing a special warm welcome for us during the pauses in the loud arguments they had with each other along the way. Back through the dreary suburbs of South London and into Victoria, we got off the train and waded past the scores of other backpackers who were here to visit our country. We then descended underground where we hopped on to the last train of our journey, a northbound Victoria Line tube that took us all the way home.

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