Our best day yet. Some sunshine, no rain, and the wind was tolerable. And a great bike ride. Total distance today was 30 miles.

Our routine has been much the same most days. Breakfast at 8 am, route review at 8:30, and then off on our ride at 9 am. Finish time is up to you: how many stops you make, how many photos you take, and how many times you get lost. Although with our GPS system, getting lost was infrequent. We had all kinds of roads today, much through forested areas.

A little bit on gravel and through potato fields.

Some on cobbles.

And single-track roads that went past more nice brick houses.

More gravel with trees that had experienced some wind over the years. We wondered why we only had the option of hybrid bikes on this trip and today’s gravel and especially cobblestones answered that for us.

Another interesting bridge to cross.

Another Fresian horse and he was very interested in us.

The deer were a surprising sight until I realized it was a venison farm.

These chubby cows were Belgium Blues. A cross-breeding incident caused the loss of a hormone which resulted in them now having double muscles. This apparently makes their meat extra lean.

We had to stop and watch the robot lawn mower for awhile.

We stopped in the little village of Beernem to get some Powerade and then met the van which was waiting at a nearby chapel to provide snacks and water.

We arrived in Damme, our designated place to get lunch. Pretty quiet but an interesting little town.

By now we had dawdled enough that Felix, who was the sweep rider today, caught up with us. We had lunch in a nice outdoor courtyard.

Leaving the restaurant, we check out the flowers.

Getting our gear back on to finish the ride.

Before leaving town, we stopped to check out the gothic city hall which was built in 1464. Further to the right than this photo shows are two rocks hanging on ropes.

During medieval times these were hung around women’s necks to wear as a form of punishment.  Not sure what they were being punished for but they looked really heavy.

Felix wanted us to see inside the city hall building so we went through this unusual door but the rest of the building was locked up so this was as far as we could go.

Then the latent photographer came out in Felix and he had us pose for a couple of photos.

Another one.

So we finally headed out of Damme but stopped at a church when we saw this three-headed statue in the churchyard.

The church was officially The Church of Our Lady and had a fairly rich history. It was constructed in 1225, expanded in the 14th century when Damme’s population increased, and partially torn down in the 18th century when the population decreased. This photo shows the bell tower which was unusual because of the flat top. There were 200 plus steps to the top but we didn’t have time to check that out.

We did go inside briefly. There are wooden statues of the Apostles here that date from the 13th century but we failed to take a photo.

So we finally left town with Felix leading us and head across the countryside to Bruges. Felix set a nice pace and was really helpful leading us through the city. That evening we had our final dinner on the boat. I took a photo of Ross with our terrific guides and we spent the rest of the evening packing up in preparation for leaving the boat at 8 am in the morning.

Bicycling part of the trip over but we did take a group photo before the ride today.