As I come from Liège, we've got to take the freeway and ride for two hours and a half to get to the coast. When the freeway ends in Oostende, with the famous John Kennedy roundabout, you still have to ride a few more kilometres to Mariakerke, and then you can see the sea, at last! Usually, on this road which links Mariakerke to Middelkerke, you have wormen that repair the rails for the tramway or anything else. If you take the same way when you are riding your bike, you're likely to be blown away due to the wind coming from the sea or caused by the speeding tramways… So, if you're planning to go to Oostende or Middelkerke, just do it only if the wind is with you; otherwise just stay home.
Apart from that, when riding on this road, you pass along the Prins Karels Koninklijk Domein, in Raversijde, a old military domain that was taken (like Belgium…) during the Second World War by the Germans to shoot the English ships… Interesting to visit, if you have two hours to spend. And it's even better if my uncle is around to make (silly) comments.
We used to have a week of holiday on the first week of November. It's no more, because the "great" university wits think that we don't need these those days off. Enough criticism for now. As I was just saying, we used to go spending one day or two at the seaside in a really small flat of Middelkerke that my uncle (the minigolf freak) had rented from a guy that he knows, M. Haverlant. This time, I think I was with my parents and my brother, and we got up so early that we managed to watch the sun going up on West Vlaanderen. Nice, isn't it? Normally I should go back to the seaside one day during the Easter (so-called)break, just the time to take a deep breath of the coastal air, eat a half chicken, walk and go back to where I live, a village where it never snows and where Dutch farmers throw their manure… (Poetic).
