Furnes, In Short, Is An
Epitome, And I Think A Very Charming One, Of All That Is Most
Characteristic In
Flanders; and not the less charming because here
the strong currents of modern life that throb through Ghent and
Antwerp
Extend only to its threshold in the faintest of dying
ripples, and because you do not need to be told that in its town
hall may still be seen hangings of old Spanish leather, and that
the members of the Inquisition used to meet in the ante-chamber of
the first floor of its Palais de Justice, in order to throw
yourself back in memory to those old days of Lowland greatness
from whose struggles Holland emerged victorious, but into which
Belgium, for the time, sank back oppressed.
Furnes - in Flemish Veurne - is an excellent centre from which to
explore the extreme west point of Belgian Flanders, which is also
the extreme west point of Belgium as a whole. Flanders, be it
always remembered, does not terminate with mere, present-day,
political divisions, but spreads with unbroken character to the
very gateways of Calais and Lille. Hazebrouck, for example, is a
thoroughly Flemish town, though nearly ten miles, in a beeline,
inside the French border - Flemish not merely, like Dunkirk, in the
architecture of its great brick church, but also actually Flemish
in language, and in the names that one reads above its shop doors.
In particular, excursions may be pleasantly made from Furnes -
whose principal inn, the Noble Rose, is again a quaint relic of
the sixteenth century - to the two delightful little market-towns
of Dixmude and Nieuport-Ville:
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