Zeebrugge; Sunday, 06 July, 2014

Breakfast consumed, and all checked-out from the hotel I headed back over to the tram stop and picked up the tram to De Haan, just this side of Oostende to pick up the journey up the coast.

I had a long wander through De Haan, which is a very pretty town, and up onto the beach. From the prom I walked out into the dunes and had a long wander along until I saw a helpful sign pointing to a tram stop the other side of the dunes, so I headed up through them.

As I turned to go up through the dunes I couldn’t help but notice that Oostende was no longer visible as a heavy black cloud had enveloped that part of the coast, so I picked up the speed a bit and made it to the tram stop just as some hefty drops of rain were starting to fall.

However, by Wenduine it was clear skies again so I had a long wander around the Mole area and then down onto the beach and the town.

Back onto the tram and into Blankenberge, I wandered through the town and out onto the esplanade. This is clearly the most resort-y of the towns on the coast with lots of high rise towers, casino’s and the entire seafront occupied by waterfront bars and restaurants. It was to one of these that I retired to have a spot of lunch and then extend my stay as another spectacular storm ripped across the Belgium coast.

After a longer lunch than I had been intending to consume I wandered along the prom to the pier in a light drizzle, only to be caught out as the intensity of the rain suddenly shot up again.

A couple of minutes, and five euros lighter, I emerged from a little kiosk shop with an umbrella and walked back to the tram stop.

I caught the tram up the line through Zeebrugge and onto the last coastal town Heist. However, by the time I reached Heist the weather had deteriorated even further and I decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle any longer so I hopped on the next tram back to Zeebrugge and collected my luggage.

Checking the train and tram times showed that the easiest (and driest) connection was to carry on all the way back to Oostende and pick up the direct Intercity train from there, which I did, back to Brussels and a 45 minute wait for check-in for the Eurostar to open that was at least in the dry.