Recently I was invited to spend a week as a guest of This Is Antwerp with a group of creative types from 11 cities around the world, from New York to Tel Aviv to Toyko. I’ll admit that it wasn’t top of my list of places to visit, on what would be my first trip to Belgium.

But after a blissful few days exploring by bicycle, Antwerp has stolen a little piece of my heart.

We spent most of the week riding the city’s Velo hire bikes, a dinky red Chopper-esque number which I found myself growing surprisingly attached to. The system works like most urban cycle hire schemes, with the first half hour included in the price. There was just one catch: a lack of pay-as-you-go options, which means registering for an access card before you start riding.

Our introduction to Antwerp came courtesy of a Cyclant bike tour, the highlight of which for me was a trip via lifts and escalators to a dead-straight tunnel under the river to the Left Bank opposite. Not something you get to do with a bicycle every day!

The cycling infrastructure was wonderfully coherent and thoughtful, and playing cat and mouse with traffic in London has been something of a shock since my return. Aside from the abundance of dedicated cycle lanes, people on bikes were also given consideration where road works were happening, and you’d see parents shepherding children to and from school by bicycle.

In short, Antwerp is a city overflowing with CycleLove…

Posted to Features
by James Greig

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