Den Haan/Le Coq

We have come to Le Coq/Den Haan for a short weekend break. Of all the Belgian seaside resorts, Le Coq is perhaps the least spoilt. Certainly there are no high rise buildings. The town sports a lovely collection of belle epoque architecture and the dunes stretch away unspoilt towards Ostend. Today we walked some ten kilometres along the beach to Ostend, visited the modern art museum (an architecturally interesting conversion of a 1930s grand surface and which has an extraordinarily rich collection of Leon Spillaerts) and the Fort Napoleon (an Ensor painting of the Fort hangs in the art museum), then walked back along the beach to Le Coq. There was a time when I visited Ostend frequently. In the time before cheap flights you could get the Jetfoil from Ostend to London (in the beginning all the way up the Thames to the Tower of London, though the service was soon re-routed to Dover). The Jetfoil hugged the Belgian coast then zipped across the Channel at its narrowest point. That part of the trip could at times be very sportif, with the pilot zig-zagging around the bigger waves when there was a big swell. Here’s a clip of the Jetfoil leaving Ostend. A Jetfoil plies the Lago di Como and it always reminds me of the cross-Channel version, long since abandoned, alas (the boats are reportedly now plying routes off Kobe, in Japan). Before the Jetfoil, and overlapping with it, there were the overnight ferries to Dover. As a young student in Italy, making my way back up to London, the ferry crossing represented the penultimate stage of the trip. I fondly remember the ‘English breakfasts’ in the ship’s restaurant and the first ‘good’ cup of tea. The Channel Tunnel put paid to most of the ferries and the Jetfoils. Later, as young professionals in Brussels, we would nip up to Ostend of a weekend to get fresh fish at the fish market on the quay – still there, though much reduced. Afterwards, we would go to what was surely one of the more atmospheric places in Belgium – the brasserie at the end of the estacade (the stockade). When the seas were very high and the waves were crashing over the barrier and spray was battering the windows there was no better place to be munching moules et frites. Well, it has been a while since we were last there and we were deeply saddened to see that a protective barrier has been built out to sea (see my picture), so that the estacade is no longer the last point between you and the British coast and the brasserie has fallen into disrepair. All things must pass…