There are 10 Provinces in Belgium. There are 3 languages spoken in Belgium, 60 percent of the population speak Dutch, 39 percent French and 1 percent German. When planning a route in Belgium it is advisable to check the various spellings of the towns on your journey. Road signs can be confusing if for example a road sign uses the Flemish name for a town and you are expecting the French name. The following two examples illustrate how confusing this can be especially when the two versions of the name do not appear to be similar. Mons is the French name for the town of Bergen (Flemish name) and Tournai (French) is called Doornik in Flemish. If you do not note both versions of the name you may have difficulty finding your way around. At the height of the fuel demonstrations in France in September 2000 we had planned to cross into France and continue down into Spain. Because we would need fuel to reach Spain we revised our plans and decided to head across the border to Belgium only to find that the Belgians were also starting to demonstrate in the larger towns. Thankfully we saw no evidence of any blockades and by the time we needed fuel it was readily available. To our surprise the weather was especially good to us and we were able to explore in sunshine some of the varied tourist attractions in this friendly country. These ranged from the memories of the First World War around Ypres (including the playing of the 'Last Post' every night at the Menin Gate), Waterloo Battlefield, the largest Dam and Lake in Belgium at L'Eau d'Heure south of Charleroi, the Industrial Canal du Centre with its massive Inclined Plane lift at Ronquieres, together with the Hydraulic Boat Lifts around La Louviere and a trip along the Meuse River banks from Dinant to Namur. Our trip to Belgium turned out to be a very welcome alternative to our normal exploration of France and Spain and I do not think it will be long before we visit again, this time to spend more time in the Ardennes and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (By the way don't confuse the Belgium Province of Luxembourg with the Grand Duchy, they are not the same place).
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