Veurne in World War 1

 Veurne Stadhuis in the Grote Markt

An unexpected trip to Veurne proved to be a delightful and truly interesting experience. About an hour from Brugge, it is a typical Flemish town. By that I mean it has a spacious and beautiful Grote Markt, lined with bars and restaurants and a tearoom, no less! There is a venerable church, Sint Walburga, with a little park around and a Stadhuis built in Flemish Renaissance style with interior walls lined with beautiful tooled and coloured leather, a legacy of the Spanish influence. On one corner of the Markt is a former library which was holding a temporary exhibition of paintings and ceramic sculptures from a local art group. And everywhere the lovely Flemish gables.

The very normality of this picturesque townscape, peacefully busy with its sunny quotidien life contrasted sharply with its situation in WW1 which I learned about from an excellent exhibition in the Stadhuis there. There are many memorial exhibitions in Flanders in the present period, 2014-18, to commemorate the First World War; unsurprising given the dates. But until today I had not realised that there had been a tiny part of Belgium which remained free for those appalling four years of savage warfare. Then, Veurne [Furnes] had been virtually on the front line of free Belgium [Vrij Vaderland] and, as the one remaining unoccupied town, had been declared the capital of Belgium; the King took up residence there establishing the Belgium army headquarters in the Stadhuis. From 1914 on, the town was crowded with thousands of refugees and Belgian and French soldiers en route to and from the front line with totally inadequate supplies of food, medicines, bandages, sheets and shelter to meet the myriad demands.

 Inundation

Veurne lies in the Westhoek area of Belgium and in order to prevent the German troops from taking over the northern part of the Westhoek with its access to the Channel ports, and after extensive battles over weeks, a desperate, defensive plan was launched. In Westhoek, the terrain was different; it comprised the polders, reclaimed land with water levels just below the surface, regulated by a widespread system of sluices and pumps. The lochs and sluices in nearby Nieuwpoort were opened allowing the sea to gradually flood the Yser plain down to Diksmuide, forming a natural barrier and stopping the German advance in that area for four long years.




Marie and Irene Curie in Veurne 

It was a real surprise to learn that Marie Curie, with her daughter, had come to Veurne in 1914 bringing their knowledge of radiography. It seems extraordinary that a double Nobel Laureate and revered physicist and chemist should so closely engage with the war effort as to spend several months in a highly dangerous area so that she could improve the care for, and safety of, severely wounded men. Disheartened by the trauma of war and guided by her humanitarian principles, she launched a project to establish a radiological service for the French army and bring x-ray machines nearer to the battlefield. She obtained vehicles that could be converted into mobile x-ray units, working with manufacturers to obtain portable generators. From these materials she was able to produce effective field radiological units, the first anywhere. She trained people, often women, in the use of the machines and before the end of the war had twenty radiological units with over two hundred trained personnel in active service. During 1917 and 1918, alone, these mobile facilities took more than a million x-rays enabling quicker, near-battlefield medical diagnosis and treatment thus saving many lives.

I have begun to understand more the difference between living in an island at war like England, which suffered considerable civilian disruption and fierce food and clothes rationing while millions of kith and kin fought and died in Europe, and experiencing war under enemy occupation and within an active war zone.

I happen, by chance, to be currently
reading Bastion: Occupied Bruges in the First

German troops in the Markt, Brugge 1914

World War by Sophie Schaepdrijver and learning of the deaths, the deprivation, the cruelty experienced from occupation by enemy forces. Apart from imminent and arbitrary brutality, there was the loss of personal autonomy; the constant fear of doing something wrong with the inevitable reprisals; the absence of normality with the closure of many shops, schools, universities, town halls; the disappearance of normal officials, taken-for-granted routines, services, free choices. Morality changed and all the routine underpinnings of every-day society disappeared under the oppressive regime of an alien force. Collaboration, with its implicit threat for future consequences, became a way for some, to get by in intolerable circumstances. Many chose to survive by becoming quislings for which they suffered severe consequences after the war finished. Society was riven and the bruising after-effects of the war lasted long after 1918.


British soldiers blinded by mustard gas

And so, a small trip to see a little Flemish town became an absorbing and unexpected learning opportunity to learn and understand more of Belgian history. Oddly, my own childhood memories of wartime Britain, also stirred.

Death and Art

Not news from, but news in, Brugge and the rest of Europe comes the death of Simone Veil who died yesterday, June 30, aged 89.. This Auschwitz survivor lived, when many of her family died, and went on to carve out a magnificent career for herself. She was Minister of Health under Giscard d’Estaing, President of the European Parliament, Honorary President of the Fondation pour la Memoire de la Shoah, Member of the Academie Francaise. Need I go on? Perhaps her most courageous act was to push through legislation for the legalisation of abortion in January 1975. Quite an achievement forty years ago in a country like France with its deeply traditional and Roman Catholic roots.

In the meantime I despair when I hear and read of the state of British politics with the inflexible Theresa and the D.U.P. support package involving real money with apparently no insistence that D.U.P. policy moves to support gay marriage and abortion though the latter, strangely, managed to garner sufficient support for meaningful legislation in Parliament. Brexit continues its downhill path of UK destruction while Corbynmania allows the mirage of a Labour electoral victory in sight when a majority of voters will not support Really Left policies. What’s not to like in the Labour manifesto? Nothing save the impossibility of affording it all.

 The Haymaker by Emile Claus. 1896

But to return to Beloved Brugge or rather, yesterday, to Ghorgeous Ghent. A friend and I returned to the Caermersklooster, in Patershol, to see another marvellous exhibition in this former Carmelite monastery. Entitled, Rooted, it displays Flemish art from 1880-1930. Much of the exhibition is of paintings from private collections and demonstrates a major turning point in Flemish art history against the backdrop of the development of Belgium as a leading industrial nation. The early works were painted by a group of Belgian Impressionists who had left the grime and overcrowding of industrial Ghent for the pastoral paradise of villages along the River Leie. These light and picturesque works by Gustave Van de Woestyne, Emile Claus, George Minne and Valerius De Saedeleer, are the most romantic and beautiful of the entire exhibition and show the nostalgia the artists felt towards the rapidly-departing pastoral idyll of earlier nineteenth century life. All these paintings are done before the First World War and, with the onset of war, the tone and style changes abruptly as artists flee Belgium and
become immersed in the international art scene.

Woman on a Bicycle. Hubert Malfait 1924

The pastoral gives way to the metropolitan; scenes, again based on ordinary lives, now picture images of cafe interiors, fairs, circuses, the music hall and modern pursuits like cycling. The pictures of Gustave de Smet, Frits Van den Berghe, Constant Permeke and Edmund Tytgat are individually striking and contrast dramatically and urgently with the earlier Romanticism on view. Two of my favourite Flemish artists feature; James Ensor in his Oostende studio and Rik Wouters in his domestic Paradise; both are idiosynchratically expressive but somehow a little apart from the general tide of art history.

One visitor enjoying a ride on the carousel

I did enjoy the manner of display in this Rooted exhibition; several small rooms are furnished with items of furniture contemporary to the paintings and one space has an imaginative version of a carousel to echo the circus theme. Delightful and light-hearted as a backdrop to an exhibition of outstanding works from radical and influential Flemish painters of the day. Worth seeing twice!

Zomer by Gustave de Smets 1913



  Open air school in Astridpark

And just as a passing observation; I noticed last week how many school parties there seemed to be roaming the streets and squares of Brugge then the penny dropped! School finished yesterday and pupils and teachers alike were unwinding in thankful preparation. Still three weeks to go in the UK before the longed-for Summer break!

Universal Genius Par Excellence



Horse's Head by Giorgio Vasari.
[in exhibition]

In search of cultural refreshment, I visited the new Leonardo exhibition in Oud Sint Jan on Sunday morning. It is billed as a World Premiere as, after Brugge, it travels Europe-wide. I do vaguely remember a similar idea for a Leonardo exhibition which featured models of some of his sketches, in the Poor Priests’ Hospital in Canterbury as part of the Festival 1985. This current exhibition is mind-blowing in its extraordinary scope and size; there are over a hundred models made from Leonardo’s sketches and demonstrate the quite extraordinary genius of the man. Indeed, Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, 1568, describes Leonardo [1452-1519] as: an example of an artist transcending nature when, ‘a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men behind.’

 

One can imagine that illegitimacy was despised and ridiculed during the fifteenth century but Leonardo was saved from ignominy in his mother, Caterina's, peasant family because his father, a rich notary living in Vinci near to Firenze, took him into his household and provided a basic school education. Ser Piero da Vinci, eventually recognising his son's extensive talents, persuaded friend, Andrea del Verrocchio, to take the boy into his workshop to shape his creativity. So, good fortune in his early days provided Leonardo with creative training and his matchless curiosity and innate creativity carried him per ardua ad astra.

 Ginevra de' Benci  1474/8

His painting was almost faultless with its wonderful use of sfumato and chiaroscuro though he did acquire a reputation for not always finishing commissions. In spite of Leonardo's mastery of portraits

 Lady with Ermine
Accomplished portrait of
Cecilia Gallerani
1490

and his astonishing anatomical drawings in surviving notebooks, the exhibition is memorable chiefly for the superlative array of wooden weapons and defensive models constructed from his drawings.

There are inventive and enormous catapults and several cannon ball-launching machines; assault cars and any number of ingenious devices involving ladders, projectiles and protective armour for the mediaeval soldier. One cone-shaped assault car is credited with being the inspiration for the modern tank.
Walking round wondering is to be in the skin of a mediaeval general, given the key to a mediaeval gallery of prototypes of weapons and armour designed to make him ecstatically impregnable on the battlefield. Leonardo was an Engineer Extraordinaire and an Inventor of Defence and Weaponry Par Excellence. And this doesn't touch on his genius with hydraulics, aeronautics, architecture, measurement.

One tends, now, to think of Leonardo da Vinci as, primarily, an artist, though he left quite a small body of work behind; 15 or 16 paintings in total though containing wonderfully realised compositions such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper but my favourites are Lady with Ermine and Ginevra de’Benci [1474/8] However, contemporaneously, he was admired and sought principally as an engineer and inventor, especially in the realms of warfare. The art of warfare ranked first in the list of arts and clearly Leonardo was entranced by it for most of his life.



Cone-shaped armoured car surmounted
by a small tower. Armoured
wooden exterior defended by  
low perimeter cannons.

Many of da Vinci's sketches were clever dreams, unrealisable at the time because of the weight of the materials available. But, this Renaissance Man's inventions often pre-dated by hundreds of years, the actual appearance of machines imagined by him. His 'aerial screw' drawing has notes ....' If this instrument made with a screw be well made -- that is to say, made of linen of which the pores are stopped up with starch-- be turned swiftly, the said screw will make it spiral in the air and it will rise.'
His idea of compressing air to obtain flight is similar to the principle behind today's  helicopters, the first of which was made in the 1940s.


 Leonardo da Vinci, self portrait, 1512/15

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

                              

 The matchless beauty of Ginevra de' Benci,
as portrayed by Leonardo in 1474/8

 

Brugge Blog from Britain

 St Augustine's Abbey ruins

Lovely to see Canterbury again; I used to go for coffee and shopping twice a month when I lived in Wye and always enjoyed it. I am more sensitised to city gates since living in Brugge so that I nodded appreciatively to the Westgate, England’s largest city gate still standing, as I passed by. Canterbury has its own UNESCO designation covering the wonderful Cathedral, the atmospheric remains of St Augustine’s Abbey and St Martin’s. The Cathedral with its exceptional early stained glass and memorial

 6th Century St Martin's Church

to Thomas Becket, the Archbishop murdered there in 1170,  boasts Bell Harry Tower which has dominated the city for hundreds of years and is a notable landmark for miles. St Augustine's, founded by St. Augustine in 597 A.D. was a centre of learning and spirituality for almost a thousand years until the unfortunate intervention of Henry V11in 1538 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, while St Martin's, the first church built in England and in continuous use since the 6th century, stands nearby. A truly exceptional and historical trio in this World Heritage Site.
 



Not entirely beautiful outside, but a great
addition to Canterbury life. 

Memory lane took me to Caffe Nero and for a quick peep at the Marlowe Theatre nearby, scene of many a past theatrical evening out. I happened to pass the Chaucer Bookshop which I love and from where I once bought an old [and expensive!]map of Kent for in a special present plus one or two from the delicious array of second-hand and antiquarian books. It is a real bookshop for book-lovers. I just had a couple of sunny hours in the centre of the city and located the recommended but new-to-me Curzon cinema, tucked away in a side street and now open for two years. It has the flavour of a cinema club with a cafe and it is adventurous and delightful. I really savoured the mid-town atmosphere with more students than I have ever seen there before. Canterbury felt young and thriving and I was inspired to pop into Cath Kidston’s to buy a handbag in the sale. I shall remember that delightful afternoon every time I behold its rich blue, spotted solid shape.

Wye on the following four days was even more beautiful than I had remembered and just as friendly and welcoming as expected. It was a real delight to be back and even my Monday evening talk to the Arts Association went down well in spite of sauna-like temperatures. Almost best of all was the lunch

 Wye, 1934 vintage

for wimmin born in 1934 of whom there were eight of us identified when I lived there. One of us was indisposed but the remaining seven had a most relaxed and amusing time lazing the afternoon away in a lovely garden, with timeless views of the golden village cricket field beyond.

And during that Wye weekend, it was back to the Stour Festival, an annual feast of' Early Music in All Saints Church, Boughton Aluph, about two miles outside the village. Mark Deller, son of the fabled counter tenor Alfred, runs it still though it was launched by his father in 1962. There are five concerts each weekend over the last two weekends in June and the setting is idyllic. Marquees for food and drink , rural Kentish landscape and Baroque music in a beautiful old church; what more could one ask? The Festival is a whole world somehow caught in a social aspic; one sees the same people, in certain fashions; courtesy and bonhomie abound; friendships are renewed; wonderful music is shared and savoured and even if it rains, the sun always shines somehow.

All Saints, Boughton Aluph, before
the annual Baroque Festival.

The first half of my ten away-days took me to Nottinghamshire, to my sister’s farm, and little outings with my sister in her wheelchair; the very best was a visit to the lane where we had grown up, only about seven miles from her present residence of nearly sixty years. The tiny house, number 14, was identified and miraculously the wood adjacent to our house where we had played with our gang at being ‘bombed out’ in WW2, and where we had climbed so many trees over seventy years ago, was unbelievably, still there! It is now part of a small country park and ‘our’ part remains. We wandered in the sun, delighted to be back, with memories re-kindled and brains sharpened. A great idea from my sister’s younger son re-kindled some of the best experiences of our childhoods, accessing a veritable store house of submerged memories.

 My sister, forgetting she has Alzheimer's,
and I on a lovely sunny outing to les temps perdus.

 

Here is Now

The trouble with the gorgeous hot weather is that it is ….SO hot. At least two days this week have been around 32 degrees, unbearable for me though I love to see sunlit mediaeval buildings, the sun-dappled squares and streets, and the terrace nodding gently in the unaccustomed heat. So walks are early where practical and outings as near to Woensdagmarkt as is possible!

Jeruzalemkerk
 

Thus I thought of Jeruzalemkerk, feeling guilty that it is over a year since I last visited this little gem, my favourite ecclesiastical spot in Brugge. There is the added attraction of a current exhibition by Aleksandar Avramovic, a Serbian artist who lives in Brussels. Along the canyons, half in bright sun, half in welcome shadow, I wandered towards Jerusalemstraat and the welcome cool of the beautiful old interior of the small chapel, the floor space dominated by the memorial to Anselm Adornes and his wife, Margareta van der Banck.

The chapel was built in 1428 by the grandfather of Anselm in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but its subsequent fame sprang from Anselm himself. Born in 1424, he became a diplomat, patron, politician, merchant, the fifth generation of his family, originally from Genoa, to live in Brugge. In 1468, he travelled to Scotland at the head of a mission to negotiate the return of Scottish merchants to Bruges after their withdrawal by King James 111 the previous year. His negotiations with King and Parliament were successful and so began a strong friendship between Adornes and James, one which subsequently favoured the Belgian with lands, finance and honours, including Knight of the Order of the Unicorn and a Baronetcy. A journey to the Holy Land by Adornes in 1470 was supported by both Kings of Scotland and of England, and he represented the Scottish Crown in Rome and ‘among the Muslems of the East’.




Memorial plaque to Anselm Adornes
in Linlithgow

Adornes made a number of diplomatic trips to Scotland over the next ten years and in 1482 commanded a military expedition to Linlithgow on behalf of King James. A subsequent pilgrimage saw him lodging in a monastery at Linlithgow where he was murdered by a marauding gang. He is buried there and his heart eventually returned to Jeruzalemkerk and his family. An extraordinary life.




Equally extraordinary is the fact that, seventeen generations after Anselm Adornes’ death, his descendants, the Limburg Stirum family, still own the Adornes’ domain and are dedicated to keeping the estate alive through public access and a variety of cultural events like the Avramovic exhibition, entitled, 'Here is Now'.  The work is interesting with the emphasis on moments in the present, experienced Now. I liked several immensely; two especially of older people together sharing a moment of tenderness, another of mutual support. There are bold sweeping strokes visible in some painting while others are almost photographic in their minute accuracy. I liked the swimmer in mid-dive; the old man descending from a mountain bent with age or fatigue, violin carefully held in one hand; a man shushing someone unseen, perhaps you, the viewer.



 Chuut by Aleksandar Avramovic

Oostende voor Anker

The day after Ascension Day, to Ostend to visit the 'boat girls' from the Wednesday morning coffee at Hotel Martin's. They live on their boats, with their husbands, in Brugge, on the Coupure, from

 The Giants of Dendermonde

October to May and then depart to travel the waterways of Europe. Except that this year, Sandy and Brett are retiring from what can be a strenuous life, to Woodbridge for a permanent berth. Both boats left a week ago and are still in Oostende hence our little visit which also coincided happily with an annual celebration called Oostende Voor Anker, Ostend at Anchor.

 Mercator

The superb weather provided a perfect backdrop as we boarded a train for the coast, packed with holiday-makers. First, to the zeilschip Mercator only just returned from extensive renovation. Mercator is the last training ship for officers and seamen of the Belgian merchant fleet; between 1932 and 1960, this was where cadets were initiated into life at sea. Since 1964, Mercator has been at anchor in Ostend; it is described as a three masted barquantine and now serves as a splendid museum run by volunteers. The very recent renovation was paid by Belgium and the E.U. but the finance only covered the external work which was extensive; the equally comprehensive interior up-date has been done by a group of volunteers and done brilliantly. A visit to Mercator gives an amazing insight into earlier maritime life.

From the delights of Mercator, we went to visit Clair and Andy on their boat. Access involved

 A temporary taste of the high life.

clambering over five boats at anchor, sides touching, in the harbour after which we were rewarded with cooling drinks and shade from the merciless sun on a very hospitable boat. We then reversed our scrambles to find Sandy’s boat at anchor alongside the pontoon, and once aboard, silently acknowledging in my case that I am not now up to living easily on a boat, clambered up to a little top deck with large parasol, and table with chairs. We sat there, talking and drinking, for ages, luxuriating in the breeze and enjoying the panorama of boats and flags, set against tranquil water and summer skies. Perfection.


 

 

But we had also come to see the Reuzen van Dendermonde, yet another procession, a major folk event listed since 2005 in the UNESCO World Heritage sites. The giants, Indiaan, Mars and Goliath, proved, indeed, to be gigantic, propelled by unseen gymnasts on stilts, hidden beneath colourful costumes. There was a uniformed handsome band and lots of children in costume dashing about. The Belgians do love their ancient processions, and tourists and visitors alike, are all caught up in admiration as they soak up the atmosphere.

 The George Stephenson on the Thames

When the procession had passed, our temporarily-resident guide, Clair, suggested we walk on to visit the George Stephenson steamship which happened to be berthed briefly in Ostend, en route to the Chatham Dockyard [for a visit by Prince Charles, no less!]. I had never heard of this particular vessel but visiting it turned out to be such an unexpected treat. The interior is incredibly beautiful with many pipes, plates, handles, hooks, wheels, taps made of copper and brass and polished to within an inch of their lives. The cumulative patina on view is dazzling! I particularly loved the radiators which were little works of art. The entire vessel spoke volumes of the love and care of the staff and the owner, Faas [Servaas] Strik, who sat in some state in the main dining, bar area, answering queries from visitors. From him we learned a little about the boat and, intrigued, I subsequently went online and discovered the astonishing short history of the boat with its historical components.
 

 The wheelhouse, buffed to perfection

The keel for the George Stephenson was laid in 2006 but it took until early 2014 for the ship to be completed as it is now and owner, Faas Strik, continues to further perfect it. Although the
apparently historic ship is, in fact new, its interior and exterior contain all kinds of historic treasures. Some examples culled from the SWZ Maritime magazine published in November 2014 after its editors had been invited aboard to view the ship prior to its initial launch:

• The cabin has a radiator that dates back to 1920 and which stems from a French fishing vessel.
• The wooden floors come from an English passenger vessel that was scrapped in 1935 in Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, the Netherlands.
• The timber on the walls come from the doors of the former Defence department building in Paris.
• The solid wood interior doors stem from the ships, the Kenya Castle and Windsor, of the Union-Castle Line and the Norway.
  The round door knobs were acquired from the US navy and twist both ways for safety reasons.
• The ship's sanitary fittings, such as the sink and toilet, are originals made by the important English inventor Thomas Crapper (1836-1910).
• The bronze anchor chain stems from an English mine sweeper of the HAM class from 1952.
• The steel bow anchor was acquired from the British navy.
• The steam whistle come from a steam tug from New York.
• The teak decks come from a school building that was built in 1888 in Bombay.
• There is no new wood on board this ship.
  

  

   Radiator as work of art

  So, the George Stephenson is the determined product of one man’s maritime obsession and when the result is so incredibly beautiful and interesting, a unique piece of floating history, we may salute obsession in its finest form!

 Elderly replicas, one from Portugal, one from Spain,
of the boats which set off to explore the New World.
They were anchored next to Andy and Clair's boat.
They are astonishingly tiny to have taken on a mighty ocean!

Holy Days and Processions

I must stop buying plants to beautify my terrace; I am not really a gardener for I treat my terrace as I did my Kentish garden; as an outside room to be made as decorative as possible while retaining basic functionality. That said, a sunny Wednesday [May 24th], a crowded market transferred to the Burg temporarily to make way for the seating for tomorrow's Holy Blood Procession and a wealth of flowers and plants on stalls beneath the trees and around the huge bronze statue, Les Amoureux.
Et voila! I bought flowers as usual [this week, luscious paeonies] AND a splendid plant. Soon there will be no room for people!

 Les Amoureux spooning beneath the chestnut spires
in the Burg.

To coffee with the girls this morning at Hotel Martin's in Oude Burg and the town is at its best; young foliage, chestnut spires, bright sunshine and thousands of bewitched tourists. The flower and plant display in the Burg markt is the prettiest ever; stalls overflow with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, nectarines, peaches. May, the loveliest month, presents a visual feast but the news from Britain with the deaths of so many young people in Manchester is unbearably sad, wretchedly nihilistic, utterly wasteful of young life and potential. The young terrorist was, perhaps, also among the victims of a mystifying, anarchic, destructive ideology. And it is still May. Read a lovely quote recently about the month of May by Samuel Scoville in his Wild Folk. Not a major writer, one might assume; sounds American, folksy, a minor rural writer one might say. But his lyricism about the most special of months, arrests the attention:
Honey-sweet May, when the birds come back and the flowers come out and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs of the dawning year.
Simple and inspiring.

 Paul van Abeele, he of the Dumery bell, playing a portable
klokkenspiel in the procession.



And early this morning [Thurs 25th] walking back from swimming in the Crowne Plaza pool, I was struck by the absolute silence in the streets; it is Ascension Day, a Feestdag, and as a Belgian friend observed yesterday, a Holy Day. This last thought had never occurred to me and I doubt there are many English people who would describe it as such. But this is still a Roman Catholic country though active church-going I hear, is on the decrease. However, a Feestdag so, deserted, waking, sunlit streets lacked buses, cars and people at 6.00 and again at 7.00 this morning and it was magical.

 Rounding a tight corner from Oude Burg into
Wollastraat.

For the Procession of the Holy Blood, I chose not to occupy my seat in the Markt; the bank of seating was in the full sun and untenable for me. Much better, in fact, to roam the streets and photograph and view from the shadows of tall buildings. I had not expected anything so major; the whole production is massive and impressive with often glorious costumes and seemingly no expense spared. Now can't remember how many donkeys were taking part, six at least, four dromedaries, maybe a dozen Shire Horses [not sure of the Belgian equivalent], a little flock of sheep and scores of compliant, happy children in mediaeval garb.

One of the donkeys displaying its customary sang-froid

The centrepiece is the Relic, a cloth with  the alleged blood of Jesus Christ, brought to the city by Thierry of Alsace after the 12th century Second Crusade. The Procession of the Holy Blood seems to have emerged as a civic ceremony by the late thirteenth century. Instituted in 1303, the ceremonial procession commemorates the deliverance of the city, by the national heroes Jan Breydel and Pieter de Conynck from French tyranny in May of the previous year, and which takes place on Ascension Day. Bruges residents of the area perform an historical re-enactment of the phial's arrival together with similar dramatizations of Biblical events. For this secular spectator, the stunning historical continuity is the most impressive with splendid costumes and wigs, coming a close second.

 A masterly touch; Himself with baby