The region of West Flanders that surrounds the pretty town of Tielt attracts few tourists, but it is a hotspot for cyclists. This is the heartland of the Tour of Flanders, the utterly ridiculous cycle race that deliberately forces competitors to cycle over cobbles and up every hill in Flanders, often several times. This year’s 269km course started in Bruges and finished in Oudenaarde, passing close to Tielt and through several nearby villages.
First held in 1913, the Tour of Flanders is legendary for its toughness. The Centrum Ronde van Vlaanderen in Oudenaarde has a reel of epic crashes that is wince inducing. There are hints of the race’s history all over this region. In Machelen, I came across a monument to Frans De Mulder, a Belgian cyclist from the 1960s. Outside a church in Wontergem is an impressive statue to Tour de France winner Lucien Buysse. Both are locals.
My own cycle through the area was far more sedate. If the Tour of Flanders is known for its short, sharp hills, that is because it perversely seeks them out. Otherwise, the countryside in this region is pleasantly flat to cycle. But it is also a region full of legend and myth, and hides a particularly violent episode in history that plays out between my start point in Deinze and the market square in Tielt.
The story revolves around a local woman, Anna De Coninck, better known as Tanneke Sconyncx. Tanneke came from the tiny village of Gottem a short distance from Deinze, and was said to be a beauty and in possession of a farm and land. Although married, she became the target of the bailiff of the city of Deinze. She rejected his advances and, as was so often the way in medieval Europe, he accused her of witchcraft.
He had her arrested on trumped up charges (is there any other kind when it comes to witchcraft?), and she was imprisoned in Tielt. For months, she was systematically tortured until she died in June 1603. Her story is known today thanks to a 1995 statue, The Witch of Tielt, that hangs in the Markt. She looks more like an angel ascending to heaven than a witch.
Tielt’s market square is home to other oddities, including a statue of a man wearing antlers with a rope around his neck and holding a razor and scissors. This is Olivier De Neckere (ironically necker is an old Flemish word for devil), who became the official barber to King Louis XI of France. Olivier was clearly disliked at court, on the same day as the king died, he was executed by hanging.
The big attraction of the town though, is its 13th century UNESCO World Heritage listed belfry. The belfry has been through a lot, destroyed or seriously damaged by marauding armies and storms. The advancing Allied armies were the last to cause it damage when shelling Tielt in 1944. The town was partially destroyed, but finally liberated by Polish troops. A Sherman tank monument is a reminder of this history.
In a twist of fate, in the First World War, Tielt was the German military headquarters, which gave it a degree of protection. No such luck in the Second World War. I’d arrived in Tielt after cycling to the attractive town of Machelen and then across rolling farmland. On the way back I passed the Poelberg, a hill that is home to a former monastery complex and a windmill.
The Poelbergmolen dates to 1688 and, remarkably, was still in regular use until 1964 using wind to mill corn. As I cycled down the other side of the hill you could still see the windmill from several kilometers away. I arrived at the River Lys near the town of Zulte. It was a pleasant and flat ride all the way back to Deinze and the train back to Brussels.
