Tour 101 / Beer on The Waterfront Tour

Tuesday 9 August- Sunday 14 August 2022

This is one of our customer's favourite Tours and is a five night, six-day Tour staying at the centrally located Hotel Novotel Ghent, near the River Leie (French: Lys) in the beautiful Belgian city of Ghent.

The Flemish city of Ghent is one of the top beer destinations anywhere in Europe, just have a look at Podge's Ghent Bar Guide! On this Tour we will be exploring beer, breweries, cafes and beer-cuisine restaurants alongside the coast, rivers, canals, lakes and waterways of Belgium.

The Coastal Tram in Belgium - a great day out

The famous Coastal Tram in Belgium runs the whole of the coast from France to The Netherlands - the longest in the world at 42 miles.

We will be including in the Tour a day travelling on the brilliant coastal tram and go on a boat cruise with beer on board and sampling the best of Belgian beer in high summer.

A nice selection of beers in De Planck, a boat Cafe in moored up in Ghent

Nice selection of beer in De Planck, Boat Cafe in Ghent.

We are based in Chelmsford Essex and we use Eurotunnel from Folkestone to get to and from Belgium in our UK hired coach. Most of our Travellers join the Tour at our main pick up point outside The Woolpack Pub, 23 Mildmay Road, Chelmsford CM2 0DN and most come from other parts of the UK, and some from further afield, especially USA. Lots of our Travellers stay the night before a Tour (and often the night of our return) at Chelmsford Travelodge only a few minutes walk from The Woolpack or at the Premier Inn near the Railway Station, about a 10 minute walk to the pick up point at The Woolpack. We all usually pop in to The Woolpack the night before departure for a meet, greet and a few beers with Siobhan who is your Tour Manager, Tour Guide and drinking pal for the duration.

Our Galloways luxury coach (49 seater coach with toilet) starts from Suffolk and on the way to Chelmsford picks up at the following if required:

Ipswich, Crown Street, IP1 3HS (opp. NCP Car Park)

Colchester, Southway, CO2 7BA (pull-in adjacent to Chapel Street South)

Chelmsford, The Woolpack, 23 Mildmay Road, CM2 0DN

Dartford, BP Garage (formerly Esso) 474 Princes Road, DA1 1YT. On the return leg we drop off at Dartford Railway Station DA1 1DR

Swanley, Unit 4, Moreton Industrial Estate, London Road, BR8 8DE

Maidstone Services J8, M20 Kent, ME17 1SS

Ashford (Eureka Leisure Park) Premier Inn, Eureka Leisure Park, Rutherford Rd, Ashford TN25 4BN

Stop 24 Services, J11, M20, Kent, CT21 4BL

Stationsplein, Adinkerke, Belgium

The detailed timed itinerary is set out below. If you would like to join us please send Siobhan an email or call her on +44 (0) 7722 724 558 for details on how to secure a place and pay the £145pp deposit for this Tour, or if you have any questions about this Tour.

All times are local & approximate.

Items marked * are included in the cost of the Tour.

Other food and drink items and passport and insurance costs are the Travellers responsibilty.

GB Alcohol Allowance Import for Personal Use from 1 January 2021

From 1 January 2021 the GB inbound personal allowance for beer duty free is 42 litres per person. The government webpage states “for example, someone will be able to bring three crates of beer, two cases of still wine and one case of sparkling wine to GB without paying UK duties” The 42L beer allowance equates to 5 x crates of 33cl bottles. The full allowance is:
• 42 litres of beer, and
• 18 litres of still wine, and
• 4 litres of spirits OR 9 litres of sparkling wine, fortified wine or any alcoholic drink less than 22% ABV
Any other goods – to the value of £390.

Detailed Tour Itinerary

Day 1 - Tuesday 09 August 2022

Very Early! Coach Pick up at Galloways depot, Denters Hill, Mendlesham IP14 5RR.

06.15hr Coach pick up at The Woolpack, 23 Mildmay Road, Chelmsford, Essex CM2 0DN.

08.00hr Coach pick up Stop 24 Services, J11, M20, Kent, CT21 4BL.

08.30hr Arrive Dover Port Ferry Departures.

09.55hr Depart from Dover Port on DFDS Ferry.

12.25hr Arrive Calais.

13.30hr Arrive at our first stop in glorious Belgium! It is right on the coast at Brasserie Rubens in Koksijde. This is a pub-restaurant on the Zeedijk (Sea Dyke) which is a pedestrian road which pretty much runs along the whole coast of Belgium, much populated with cafes. They often have beachside terraces and the serving-folk have to cross from base to the terrace regularly! Here, the beachside of the café has a lovely open air heated swimming pool between it and the ‘Zee’. Bring your bathers (as the Welsh say). Here we will have our first group lunch and a crack at their selection of 60 beers. Try the local beer from Middelkerke called Jus de Mer, a 7.2% blonde. Inside the café are pictures of the famous Flemish heavy horses used here to fish for North Sea Shrimps at low tide, the fishermen dragging wooden sleds behind them. This part of the Belgian coast is the only place left in Europe where this is still practised by a few families who train the Brabant horses to do this.

15.45hr Leave Lunch Stop Brasserie Rubens, Koksijde.

16.00hr Arrive at Sint Idesbald Brewery in Koksijde for a tour and tasting*. St Idesbald is a village within Koksijde, named after a 12th century Cistercian monk and abbot of Ten Duinen Abbey (The Dunes Abbey), the ruins of which are just north of this site. We are visiting Ten Bogaerde domain which was one of 25 abbey-owned farms supporting the monks at the height of their power. The site we are visiting has a church which is now a cultural centre, but we will be going to the former monastery piggeries which have been recently converted into a brewery and tasting hall with a lovely terrace with views over the Ten Bogaerde domain. The brewery was built by Huyghe Brewery (who brew Delirium Tremens beers). Apparently they are hoping to sow 2.5 hectares of summer barley here on the Ten Bogaerde estate, which will be used in the brewing.

17.30hr Leave Sint Idesbald Brewery in Koksijde.

18.45hr Arrive at Novotel Gent Centrum and check in. Travellers have a free evening exploring the bars and cafes of the city armed with Podge’s Gent Bar Guide and Map* copies of which will be distributed on Tour. Gent is an amazing city for beer cafes as you will see and Podge’s complete Gent Bar Guide on google maps contains a whopping 93 entries, but we’ll be suppling you with an edited, printed, more manageable version covering the central city bars.

Day 2 - Wednesday 10 August 2022

10.00hr Following a buffet breakfast* we head off by coach from Novotel Centrum, Gent.

10.20hr Call in at Dranken Geers at Oostakker, an industrial zone just north of Gent where Dominiek & Leen Geers and their family run one of the top beer warehouses in Belgium. He is well-respected in the beer world. Here we have an opportunity to stock up on beers for home use (see new UK duty allowances at the foot of this itinerary). This is a chance to get hold of any special lambics and other favourite and rare beers from the 1500 choices he has in stock.

11.30hr Leave Dranken Geers in Oostakker.

12.30hr We make our way toward Bruges, but for this visit we are dropping down to the south side of the town and to a lovely big red wooden ship moored in the Gent-Oostende canal called the Mayflower Lichtschip. The vessel was built in 1883 in Amsterdam by the Rijkswerf (State shipyard) as Lichtschip Number 3 (Lightvessel) for the Dutch Government. This is a lightvessel which is a ship which acts as a lighthouse for use in waters too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouse construction, and were customarily painted red. Sadly, large automated buoys have now made these nice ships obsolete. It has no engine and must be moved by tugboat. In 1940 it was taken over by the Dutch army, was renamed the 'Hollandse Glorie' and was used to train young Dutch marines. We’ll have a group meal here, either on board, or on the sun terrace alongside. There are about 20 beers to choose from, including local Brugse Zot Blonde, made in Bruges, of course.

15.00hr Leave the Mayflower Lichtschip in Bruges.

15.30hr Arrive at Tijdokstraat, Zeebrugge.

15.40hr Board the boat at Zeebrugge Port for boat tour of the port of Zeebrugge*.

16.00hr Port of Zeebrugge Boat Tour commences. We have not taken this boat trip before, and I am excited to see the Zeebrugge Mole up close, as I have taken groups to the Zeebrugge Port Raid monument on the mole several times and explained the action of British raiders here on 23 April 1918. On this boat tour we are going to discover one of the great working ports of the world in action. This port was once just a transit port, but is now multifunctional for cargo giants, ferries, cruise ships, fishing boats, tugboats, luxury yachts and all this barely a few steps from each other. The port has become a major European distribution port since major development works between 1972 to 1985. Since then total tonnage has doubled. It is Europe's leading RoRo port and the world's largest port for imports and exports of new vehicles. It is also Europe's largest terminal for liquefied natural gas receiving natural gas from the Troll gas field via the 814 km long Zeepipe under the North Sea. The port of Zeebrugge is managed by the port authority Maatschappij van de Brugse Zeehaven (Company of the Bruges Seaport) and interestingly the city of Bruges is the main shareholder. During the tour we see a Belgian naval base, a gas terminal and the wind turbines on the dam. We will also get to see the island of terns with its thousands of seabirds and one of the largest sea locks in the world. The boat tour has an audio-visual guide in English.

17.15hr Disembark the boat at Zeebrugge.

18.00hr Arrive at the Jagershof in Ursel, a bar in an old hunters lodge in the middle of a wood. This place has a stunning beer card of 450 offerings. We will have a little stop here on the way back to Gent for a coffee. Not really. The beer list apparently includes the famous, lush Black Albert and Cuvee Delphine from De Struise Brouwers. If you get the chance, do try one of these. They are consistently given 100/100 on Ratebeer for taste and style by contributors.

19.15hr Leave Jagershof in Ursel.

20.00hr Arrive back at Novotel, Gent.

Day 3 - Thursday 11 August 2022

10.00hr Following a buffet breakfast* we head off on foot the short walk to our morning Gent city boat cruise.

10.15hr Arrive at Vleeshuisbrug to board the boat.

10.30hr Our Gent city cruise* with Rederij de Gentenaer takes us through the River Leie and the Lieve and we pass some of the great sights of the city. The high spot being cruising below the Castle of the Counts (The Gravensteen), a textbook Hollywood castle. We will have a beer on board which will be a Delirium Tremens*.

11.20hr Disembark at the Vleeshuisbrug in the city centre to walk the short distance back to Novotel Gent Centrum and join the coach.

11.40hr Leave Gent by coach.

12.30hr Arrive at the Watermolen (The Watermill) in Hamme. This is a beautiful café in a quirky three storey building (which presumably was once a water mill) situated on a waterway called the Oude Durme. This is a tributary of the River Schelde which has now separated off from the main Durme waterway, like an ox-bow lake. Here we will have our pre-arranged meal and a beer or two. They have a small beer list but do have six Trappist beers. Why not try a local beer from the great brewers Vicaris – here they do the lovely summery Quinto, plus their Triple and the luscious, very dark Generaal.

15.00hr Leave the Watermolen at Hamme.

15.45hr Arrive at 't Steencaycken Café in Boom. This is a beautiful spot on the Rupeldijk on the Rupel, another tributary of the mighty River Schelde. This area once housed over 100 brickmaking yards using, originally hand-formed mud from the waterbanks. This building dates from 1780 and was used as a checkpoint for arriving ships and was the home of the former brickyard owner. The brick making craft here disappeared by the 1960s with increased use of concrete and mechanization. There is only one left in this region in Noeveren nearby. We will rest here for a bit and have a beer. Why not try their Klinkaert Beer, which means Brickmaker, brewed by Brouwerij Van Steenberge.

17.00hr Leave 't Steencaycken Kiln Café in Boom.

18.00hr Arrive at the Dok Brewing Company, Dok Noord Gent. This brewery on the Gent Docks opened in 2018 at Hall 16 which was an industrial transformer hall. It is a brew-pub complete with chandeliers and a sun terrace. The core movers behind this project are Dimitri Messiaen who used to run the smallest pub in Gent - the Galgenhuis - and who was behind the invention of Artisan Pils 13 which you will see a lot of around town and which is now made here. Another partner is Janos De Baets who used to work with Proef Brewery in Lochristi and who brews Hedonis beers including Ouwen Duiker (the beer label is for some reason a deep-sea diver but the beer name is colloquial for ‘Old Perv’). The brewing kit was custom made in South Africa to enable these guys to brew any style of beer – and they do. Don’t expect to ask for a Trappist beer or other traditional style here! They have 30 taps and avoid selling the big brand lagers which dominate the Belgian market, but will offer quality beers from passionate brewers like themselves. They can’t manage a group of our size a brewery tour, so I’ll get everyone a beer here*.Why not try the What’s Up Dok?, a Double Pastry (Imperial) Stout at 10,8% abv which is a collaboration with Norway’s top brewer Haandbryggeriet. You know you want to.

19.30hr Leave Dok Brewing Company by coach. You are welcome to walk to Novotel in about 20 mins, just let Siobhan know if you are going to use Shanks’ pony.

19.40hr Drop at Novotel Centrum, Gent.

Day 4 Friday 12 August 2022

10.00hr Following a buffet breakfast* in our hotel we head off by coach for a day on the brilliant Belgian Coastal Tram which at 42 miles in length is the longest tram line in the world.

11.00hr Arrive at the Kursaal Casino and theatre/music venue on the corner of Westhelling and Van Iseghemlaan, Oostende. This is also where we will pick up with the coach in the evening and will be marked on your map. We will walk the short distance to the main central Oostende tram stop, the pretty Marie-Joséplein. Here we will obtain a day tram pass* for each traveller and you have the day free to travel on this fantastic coastal tramway. This tram stop marks just about the middle of the whole tram system. You are then free to travel the complete length from the French border in the west to the border with the Netherlands in the east but this does take about two and a half hours, so bear this in mind when planning your day and you may want to build in time for a meal. The ‘western’ half from Oostende to De Panne on the French border is more heavily populated with bars and restaurants than the ‘eastern’ half to the border with the Netherlands. Travellers will be provided with bar guides* for the best places for a beer (and food) along the coast and all bars marked are within walking distance of the tramline. A tram map with all 69 stops will be provided to travellers. In the summer season coastal trams run every 10 minutes. Did you know that a 'vacuum cleaner' tram comes past every day to remove all the sand from the tracks?

20.00hr Coach pick up outside the Kursaal Casino, Oostende where we were dropped off in the morning.

21.00hr Arrive and drop at Novotel Centrum, Gent.

Day 5 Saturday 13 August 2022

10.00hr Following a buffet breakfast* we head off by coach from Novotel Centrum, Gent.

10.15hr Arrive at the Kantien on the South-Eastern outskirts of Gent within the university sports zone. A recent addition to the Gent beer scene, this is a great bar-café conversion above the KR Sport Gent Rowing Club. The bar is at the end of a five lane rowing straight built in 1954 using part of the River Leie (Fr. Lys) which flows through it. The café beer menu extends to an excellent, well-picked 45-strong choice. They are all top drawer beers with five on tap. Beers from de la Senne, Hedonis, Contreras (Valier), Verzet, Siphon (Damme Nation), Toye (Goedendag). If you are looking for an appropriate morning beer, look no further than the excellent Girardin Black Label Lambic beer or if you like ‘em sharper, Cantillon Geuze. If you fancy something dark go for the Noir de Dottignies (De Ranke) or the Damn Porter from Dok or Cassandra from Siphon. An embarrassment of riches.

11.15hr Leave Kantien Kanodreef, Gent.

11.45hr Arrive at the picturesque Sashuis at Astene, a famous Café-Bar-Museum situated on the River Leie (Fr. Lys). This river is 125 miles long and runs north-east from its source in Pas-de-Calais France all the way to Gent where it flows into the River Schelde. This pretty café only opens on a Saturday and Sunday but should be bustling in summer especially as it has a front terrace onto the river. The café is opposite one of those green meccano road bridges over the river and is the raison d’etre for this building. Sashuis translates as lock house and this museum-café is housed in a building dating from 1862 which was the lock master’s house, the man responsible for the hand-operated bridge. It still is, as the bar owner stops serving and hand cranks the gates if someone is passing in a boat. The cafe houses a collection of inland and maritime shipping artefacts and documents and paintings from the time of the height of the shipping trade in the nineteenth century. The beer card includes beers from Verzet and Viven and they also have a blonde house beer called Schobiak, which may be brewed by Halve Maan in Bruges. The owner, Wim, has a ridiculous green parrot who has the run of the place. He eats the beer menus. Here we will have a beer, a look at the lock gates, and stroke the tame parrot.

13.15hr Leave the Sashuis at Astene.

13.30hr Arrive at the Koetshuis in Ooidonk. This is a lovely café restaurant in the grounds of the very beautiful moated and turret-y castle (or stately home as we British would call) which is now the private property of Count Henry t'Kint de Roodenbeke. The Koetshuis translates as carriage house, or stables (I prefer carriage house!) and once served the great house. They have a spacious terrace and orchard too and here we will have a meal and a beer or two. Try their Borgia Beer or local beer Paalsteen.

16.00hr Leave Koetshuis Ooidonk.

16.30hr Arrive at tasting café and Brouwerij Haeseveld, Gent. This is a big new venture on the east side outside Gent and opened in July 2020. The people behind this micro-brewery, café, shop and huge party venue funded this to the tune of $5 million and it has already been included in a heritage listing. Huyghe brewery helped with the original beer recipes. The buildings were once a thriving horticultural business which fell into disuse in 1910. Only the former director's house was in relatively good condition, known as "Gasthof Haeseveld" (Hare-Field) apparently named after the many hares hopping about in the surrounding fields. In 2018 four entrepreneurs wanted to start a new venture here and they included the landowner, the chairman of a packaging company, the MD of Brouwerij Huyghe and a former CEO of food company Alpro. They have installed a copper-clad brewery from Germany. Production was initially tank/tap and bottled beer just for in-house use, but expect to see wider distribution of the bottles soon. They have a beautiful tasting room, a large terrace overlooking meadows and two petanque courts. The site has one major drawback, there is no mains sewer, so all processed water is collected in tanks and removed from site regularly. The logo, labels and glassware all feature two hares with antlers, facing each other. These fanciful creatures are known in the US as jackalopes (I don’t think we have these in the UK). I suspect it to be all a marketeers dream, but the iconography is said comes from the ‘legend’ that circulated for years that a hare with antlers hopped around the fields here. We will have a brewery tour* and a taste of their beer*. Their current beer list is as follows:

• Haeseveld Premium Pilsner 5.3%abv

• Haeseveld Strong Blond 7.9%abv

• Haeseveld Ultra Strong Blond 10.5%abv

• Haesveld Strong Dark 8.73%abv

• Haeseveld Weizen 5.5%abv wheat beer

18.30hr Leave Brouwerij Haeseveld, Gent.

18.45hr Arrive back at Novotel, Gent.

Day 6 Sunday 14 August 2022

10.00hr After breakfast* check out of hotel. Coach leaves for our last day.

11.00hr Arrive at Brasserie Bergelen in Wevelgem back in West Flanders. This is a beautiful countryside large white building and red-roofed farm on three sides of a square which now forms the lovely big café courtyard. Around the building is a square watery moat. This is a cafe restaurant in a Belgian 'domein' which is a kind of nature park with a lake, birds, and a lot of frogs who even get as far as the cafe tables at times. It has a superb well-picked beer list of around 70 and many come from West Flanders breweries, some of the best including Feniks, Toye, Van Honsebrouck, Gulden Spoor, Omer Vander Ghinste. In fact, unusually these days the beers are listed by brewery rather than beer style or colour. Nice touch. If I were you, I’d try the mighty Jazz oatmeal Stout from Feniks in Heule, or with less abv, anything from De Leite Brewery in Oostkamp, or Toye in Kortrijk. All are very good brewers.

12.30hr Leave Brasserie Bergelen in Wevelgem.

13.00hr On the way to our last stop, I want to take you for a little detour to a West Flanders town called Dadizele for a quick beer and a water (closet) historical visit. The exact location and the nature of the item we will visit will remain shrouded in secrecy, until we get there. Dadizele is a small village which from the 1300s was a place of religious pilgrimage and was destroyed and rebuilt after the First World War to the original street plan, as it was flattened by allied artillery. The village was on the German side of the Western front here in Belgium. We will pop into a local café for a beer and I’ll take you to see what we came here for!

14.15hr Leave Dadizele.

14.45hr Arrive at our last beer on the waterfront stop at the Pacific Eiland Restaurant in Ypres. The restaurant “Pacific Island” is located on its own island in the waters of the Majoorgracht or major canal in Ypres. We reach the island by its own dedicated foot bridge. The island was built around 1640 by Spanish occupiers to deter the enemy and functioned as an ammunition depot. The ramparts you see here were bult by French military architect Vauban. In the late 1800s the stone ramparts, moats and ditches which once completely surrounded the town were pulled down and the moats filled in and for development in the northern and western sides of the town, just leaving what survives in the south and east today. The Major moat is the only remaining moat that still has the same structure as in the Louis XIV era (1686). There are three islands. Two are uninhabited and are nature reserves, but one has a restaurant where we will have our group meal and a beer or two. You might get a glimpse here of the local birdlife such as blue heron, grebe, cormorant, coot, moorhen, mallard and possibly even the sandpiper or kingfisher who haunt these odd little islands.

17.15hr Leave Pacific Eiland in Ypres.

18.30hr Arrive Calais Port.

20.01hr Leave Calais on DFDS Ferry.

20.31hr Arrive Dover Docks.

21.00hr Coach drop off Stop 24 Services, J11, M20, Kent, CT21 4BL.

22.00hr Coach drop off Dartford Railway Station DA1 1BP.

22.50hr Coach drop off Junction of Lady Lane & Mildmay Road, Chelmsford CM2 0EA.

23.05hr Coach drop off Travelodge Hotel, 128-136 Parkway, Chelmsford CM2 7GY.

23.15hr Coach drop Premier Inn Victoria Road, Chelmsford CM1 1NY.

00.20hr Coach drop Galloways depot, Denters Hill, Mendlesham IP14 5RR.

Tour Price is £955 per person sharing a twin or double room

Single Supplement: £275

We regret that we need to charge a single supplement for travellers who would like their own hotel room. This is because increasingly hotel room prices are quoted with very little difference between single person or two person occupancy. If you are travelling alone and want to share a room with another traveller please contact Siobhan as we are regularly able to pair up travellers in twin rooms to avoid the need for payment of the Single Supplement.