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Of falsehoods and fishermen
It may be a case of false promotion but if you were to believe their postcards the Belgian coast would be full of bronzed, bare-breasted beauties, the swimming suit of yesteryear relinquished in favour of the birthday suit of the current day. We went looking but the only points of interest to be found were a few fishermen and the hardy, fully clothed against grey skies and coolish summer weather.
Oostduinkerke may not be the best known of European holiday spots but it is here the grandparents of Fleurs’s friend Thomas have an apartment which looks out from its fourth floor vantage point across the sand dunes onto a beach which stretches to the Netherlands in the North and France in the South. To the West across the Channel, although not to be seen, is England. Dotted among the dunes at our end of town are a few holiday homes, most of them still shuttered-up since winter, and a huge, stark building which belongs to the socialists and used until recently as a children’s camp, now destined we understand to be home to a Belgian reality television show. Bleak Brother or something appealing like that no doubt. In town, a wide promenade is bordered on one side by tall apartment blocks and, at ground level, restaurants, shops with plastic buckets and spades, toys, kites and souvenirs, and places hiring out novelty pedal-powered devices. On the seaside is a row of stark, uniform white huts which can be hired throughout the summer to store beach gear. For the first month of summer the place seems very quiet but it comes alive, we are told, in July and August. Perhaps it is then the restaurants will stay open after 7 at night.
But if bare-breasted beauties were not to be found, the other subjects of local postcards were about; the fishermen in yellow parkas and leggings who trawl the shore each day using Clydesdale-like horses to pull nets though the chest-high surf. At the end of each trawl, the nets are emptied on the beach and useable fish, in this case shrimps, stored in cane baskets strapped to the sides of the horses. Left behind to the marauding seagulls or to be washed back into the sea are the small crabs, baby flounder and hundreds of jellyfish, the latter of which seemed to have the texture and look of discarded silicone breast implants. It was all very photogenic, aside perhaps from the fact that the catches seem meager, the fishermen playing to an audience of skinny legged, pasty schoolchildren and a local journalist and photographer.
In the distance from the balcony of the apartment we could see Dunkirk, or Duinkerke as the Belgians spell it, the scene of the great landing during World War II, and in the other direction Nieuwpoort. Although much bigger than Oostduinkerke, Nieuwpoort has the same look and feel with its tall apartment blocks, wide promenade and pedal-powered contraptions for hire. We know this because we walked there, for what seemed like miles, along the beach, stopping at a pier from which local children were trying their hand with crab nets and others were fishing with rods without any visible sign of success.
It was in Nieuwpoort too that we came across the geriatric equivalent of a biker-gang run. Elderly in wheel chairs everywhere, ten abreast and at times blocking the entire promenade. This was intimidating stuff and maybe why the single helicopter of the Belgian armed forces hovered overhead. Keeping order, or maybe ensuring that this gang of oldies was not going to disrobe and bring the postcards to life.