Overall
This was a very welcome and enjoyable tour. With Brugge on your doorstep, it may seem somewhat perverse to spend your days cycling in its hinterland. If you want to visit particular sights in Brugge, you will need either to allow extra time for this or to give up some of the cycling. I found each day?s ride did require the bulk of the day, leaving the evenings for exploring Brugge itself, recognising this meant attractions would be closed, but that the vast numbers of tourists thronging in the city would have substantially reduced. The cycling is essentially flat and is mostly on made-up surfaces (sometimes cobbles). Cycling along canals and rivers with avenues of trees on either side is idyllic. Apart from Brugge itself, which has to be the biggest highlight of this tour, I liked De Haan, Damme and Sluis. When I visited, I found a few of the attractions closed off.

Date of Tour: 2017-05-25/30 (5 nights)

Hotel Chosen: Velotel

Suggested Map: FalkPlan Fietskaart Number 30: ?Belgische Kust? (This map has the new knooppunt numbers. Note that the FalkPlan Belgium Fietsatlas is out-of-date and does not have the new numbers in place in West Flanders, but will still be useful for other parts of Belgium.) A very good map is provided as part of the information pack.

Transfers
I took the Eurostar train from London to Brussels Midi-Zuid, from where a domestic train service (to Oostende) stops at Brugge. The fastest services take around an hour, but slower services take over two. Unfortunately, I?d read (and, separately, been told) that the Eurostar ticket entitles you to onward travel anywhere in Belgium within 24 hours of arrival in Brussels. It?s only certain Eurostar tickets which entitle this, so I ended up having to pay the EUR7.00 surcharge for buying my ticket on the train (around 50% extra on the basic Brussels - Brugge ticket price). A taxi from Brugge station to the Velotel was around EUR15.00.

The Hotel
The Velotel is a little isolated on the edge of town: around 4 km from the centre of Brugge. There?s an Aldi supermarket in the vicinity, though, whenever I passed by, it never appeared to be open. By bike, there?s an easy route into the centre, which takes about 15 minutes. The hotel also has a special deal with a taxi company (from hotel to centre or back, EUR10.00 each way) or there?s a bus. So, those people choosing this hotel should be prepared either to travel into the centre in the evenings, or to book the half-board option, because there?s nowhere else for evening meals in the neighbourhood of the hotel. I had booked half-board, and preferred the days when a buffet was provided (when the hotel was busy); on other days, it seemed to be a set menu and, if there was anything you didn?t fancy, you had to negotiate with the chef. Apart from that, the hotel was everything expected of a modern 4-star hotel: a little bland and impersonal but with all the things, and more, the guest needs. One quibble is that only one power socket remained live when the switch at the door was off and this switch also controlled the light in the room?s ?lobby area?; I wanted to use two sockets to recharge camera/phone/GPS and other devices and recharging had not always completed by the time I wanted to go to bed, so I ended up having to leave this light on, at least for part of the night. So much for the request to save electricity by switching off the lights when you leave the room! As its name suggests, though, the hotel is geared-up for cycling. It has excellent facilities for storing cycles and as well as the routes provided by VOS Travel (Rad und Reisen?s local agent), the hotel has 15 other suggested routes of its own for which they will provide plans free of charge. (I was given all 15!) The hotel is also only a hundred metres or so from knooppunt 31, from which the provided routes start. (The route plans also give directions from/to NH Hotel, Brugge.)

Bike
On arrival at the hotel, the receptionist provided me with all the usual papers, but, additionally, I was given the route plans and the key for my bike, which I was told was waiting for me in the bike area of the garage. There, I found two long lines of bikes and it took a couple of minutes to find the one assigned to me (the number?s on the rear mudguard). To the bike I attached my own bracket for my handlebar bag (dispensing with the velcro-attachment for the see-through plastic envelope provided by VOS Travel) and a water bottle cage. Apart from that, the only adjustment I made to the bike was to raise the saddle by quite a good margin. The bike had a Shimano hub-generator powering a front light (so anyone with a suitable connector could tap into that for on-bike electrical power, if desired) and a battery-powered rear light. So, I had no worries about travelling into Brugge in the evenings and staying until after lighting-up time. I found the bike comfortable with well-adjusted gears and effective brakes. So, high marks for the bike.

The Route Book
The Route Book is a ring-bound A5-size booklet containing the directions for each of the four routes, together with some background/historical information about Brugge and places encountered on the rides. Rather uselessly for me, for I was handed the booklet after I?d arrived, it also contains instructions for reaching Brugge and the chosen hotel at the start of the tour. The routes use the knooppunt system, but rather than just giving the knooppunt numbers (which, incidentally, were changed in the Brugge area in March 2017, turning all earlier cycle maps into sources of confusion), the directions provide pretty much turn-by-turn instructions, which was definitely useful, for sometimes the direction signs along the road can be hidden in undergrowth, or masked by a parked vehicle. I found only two mistakes in the instructions and another point, at the end of the second ride, where they were confusing. The route book fitted perfectly inside the map case on my handlebar bag (the alternative is to use velcro straps and the plastic wallet provided by VOS Travel as part of the package). In addition to the route book, a map is provided. This is of very good quality, comparable to my FalkPlan Fietskaart No. 30 (which also has the up-to-date knooppunt numbers). The map shows each of the routes marked on it, a different colour for each route, so it?s easy to see where each one will take you. I needed to refer to the map on the final day, when I discovered the official route blocked off ? some sort of excavation work was going on ? so I needed to work out a different route round this.

Other Equipment
The Route Book mentioned other equipment: a pannier bag, cycle computer (for matching distances in the route book with distances travelled), pump and puncture repair kit. These weren?t handed over by reception on arrival, but I was given them on request the following morning. I didn?t bother with the computer, but, for the first time ever on one of these tours, I needed the repair kit.

For me, days 1 and 6 were travel days. For the remaining days, I decided to cycle the routes in the order given in the booklet, which meant the longest (at 69 km) was the first.

Day 2 (Castles of Torhout)
Cycling along the Brugge-Oostende canal early-on was very pleasant (I was enjoying it so much, I forgot to look out for knooppunts, and had to turn back). Some of the castles were disappointing (hidden behind gates (Bloemendale) or under scaffolding (Koudekeuken), closed for a garden party, with even the cycle path off-limits, requiring a re-route (d?Aertrycke)!); even the best one, Kasteel Wijnendale, seemed a complete anticlimax until I found the spot described thus in the route book: ?A little further we have a nice view on the castle?. Later, there?s some more attractive cycling along the waterside and the ?groene 62? and we pass by a windmill.

Day 3 (Bulskampveld and Brugge-Gent Canal)
Again, early on, we cycle along the waterside and in beautiful neighbourhoods of Brugge with shady avenues of trees. The route goes out past a nature reserve and a bird sanctuary. I found this was the ride I finished earliest and, as the route comes back into south-east Brugge, at knooppunt 5 (which I reached at about 14:30), it?s then possible to go into ?Brugge sightseeing mode? before returning to the hotel. Unfortunately, this is the point where I found the route instructions unclear. For the NH Hotel (good if you want to explore the ?t Zand district), you are correctly told to go left to 49 (through Minnewaterpark, itself worth exploring), but for the Velotel you need to go right instead, to 98 (Gentpoort) and along the eastern perimeter of Brugge, past the windmills to 3 and then the reverse of the path at the start of the day (23 - 27 - 31).

Day 4 (De Haan)
The only day?s ride where you don?t head to knooppunt 31 as the first point, instead turning left from the hotel and heading towards Zeebrugge. The polder village of Lissewege is reached first. The route passes close to the large coastal town of Blankenberge, but doesn?t give clear instructions for reaching it. I found the town hall and a small park nearby with a city plan and an incorrectly-positioned ?You are here? at which point I decided I wouldn&rsquo?t bother with Blakenberge, and returned to the planned route. The smaller De Haan, somewhat further on after travelling through polderland, stood out immediately as being worth some time. My return to the hotel was an object lesson in bridge design, encountering three bridges along the way, each one lifted to allow vessels to pass underneath and each using a completely different technique.

Day 5 (Damme, Sluis and Knokke)
The day?s route starts off re-tracing the start of the Bulkampveld route, but soon turns off left, past a nature reserve, reaching the interesting town of Damme very quickly. You travel through polder land and reach Sluis, where a myriad of fluffy air-borne seeds give the impression it?s snowing. Further on, where the instructions say ?R on unpaved cycle path at café ?De Witte Koksmuts??, I came to an abrupt halt, finding the path fenced off, with earth-excavation machines the other side. Clearly, it wouldn?t be possible to take this route, so I continued alongside the main road until I reached a turning, where I saw a sign for ?50?. A quick consultation of the map showed I could use 50 - 59 - 49 - 45 to get back on the planned route, although it meant missing the dunes of the Zwin. Knokke turned out to be a well-developed seaside resort with apartments/hotels all the way along the promenade pretty much to Zeebrugge; it didn?t appeal to me.