Day 5: Bruges to Ghent (The Easy One)

Bruges wakes up quietly, and if you’re smart enough to be out in it before the tourists arrive, it rewards you handsomely. Lucy has always loved this, seeing a city rub its eyes and stretch, and I have to admit she’s right. There is something about empty cobblestones and soft morning light that no guidebook ever quite captures. I walked, I breathed it in, and inevitably I found a queue. You didn’t need to ask. Outside a patisserie, naturally. The Belgians and their bread. An unshakeable love affair, and frankly, who can blame them.

Twenty kilometres in, the canal path delivered something I genuinely did not see coming. Hammocks. Strung between the trees, right there on the trail, free for anyone who fancied a pause. I couldn’t resist. I climbed in, took the obligatory selfie, and lay there for a moment watching the clouds move. Cast your mind back to day one, where I was genuinely grateful for a damp bench in a bus shelter. Day five, horizontal in a hammock on a Belgian cycle path. The upgrade was not subtle, and I was delighted by it.

Today is only 45 kilometres, a gentle bimble along the waterways into Ghent, and I am in absolutely no rush. The high-end road bikes glide past me in that way they always do, riders locked in, heads down, the quiet hum of expensive carbon and serious intent. I watched them go and I felt something I didn’t quite expect. Recognition, more than envy.

That was me, not so long ago.

Every ride was a training session. Speed, power numbers, heart rate, nutrition timing. I loved all of it, genuinely loved it. I’d finish a session, upload to Strava, analyse the data, read about Ironman strategy until my eyes gave up, then start again the next morning. It shaped me in ways I’m still discovering. The discipline, the resilience, the quiet confidence that comes from doing hard things by choice.

I still have the medals. I have the tattoo, which feels rather permanent and also entirely right.

But I watched those riders disappear around the bend and I felt no pull to chase them. You need new challenges. Things change, and that’s not a loss, it’s just life moving forward. I don’t want to get old fast, but I also know that clinging to a version of yourself that’s already done its job isn’t staying young. It’s just standing still in different kit.

Onwards, then.

Two kilometres further down the towpath and the universe, as it occasionally does, decides to make a point. A triathlon event, right there on the canal. The swim entry, the bike transition, athletes in that particular state of focused anxiety that every triathlete knows intimately. The quiet checking and rechecking. The lube, the goggles, the suppressed terror dressed up as routine. I felt a flutter of something in my chest. Old muscle memory, perhaps.

I rode on, smiling.

The open road does something to your thinking when you let it. No music, no podcasts, just me and my ridiculous little Brompton, which I love unreservedly. I have now passed hundreds of road bikes that cost more than small cars, a sea of ebikes, and not a single other Brompton. Not one. I am making a note to write to the company. Belgium is an untapped market and someone needs to take this seriously.

Ghent received me warmly, even if the hotel wasn’t quite ready to do the same. No matter. The place had excellent jazz, excellent wi-fi, and the kind of cool, unhurried atmosphere that makes it very easy to sit and think. Which I did. Business ideas, life ideas, the usual gentle chaos that fills the spaces when you take away the noise.

Sunday in Ghent means the shops are closed, but nobody told the people. The bars and restaurants were heaving. We do love our food and drink, and the Belgians appear to share this enthusiasm entirely.

I found my dinner at Amadeus. All you can eat rack of ribs, a chocolate mousse, and a liqueur coffee that I suspect they’ve been perfecting since the actual 1940s. The place feels like stepping into a film set, all warmth and candlelight and the comfortable feeling that nobody here is in any particular hurry.

Last night of the trip. Sometimes you have to go out with a bang.

Tomorrow, an early start, 62 kilometres, and a train to catch. But tonight, the ribs.