The noise from the battlefield once rattled the chandeliers in Downing Street and still echoes through a Flanders today at rest.
The lowlands of northern Belgium are ideal terrain for cyclists, runners, walkers and canal cruising boats.
All of which were suspended when Germany and the Allies used Flanders more than a century ago as dogs do a chew toy.
And which you can witness for yourself on a memorable battlefields tour of the World War sites.
When, of course, you can trace your ancestors, pay tribute with a wreath at the Menin Gate and engross yourself in Flemish life.
A gentler pace
Flanders, of course, moves at a gentler pace now with the only visitors welcome ones.
And while everybody makes way for those on two wheels now.
There is another way to traverse the Flemish lowlands through its waterways.
Le Boat cruisers start and finish at the Le Boat base in Nieuwpoort.
And take in Ypres which prior to World War I was best known as a Medieval merchant city.
And whose most famous landmark and hub then was the Halle aux drapes or Cloth Hall.
Which was razed to the ground in World War I was reconstructed between 1933 and 1967 and recast as the In Flanders Fields Museum.
Cut from the same Cloth
Now if you want a flavour of what the Cloth Hall, one of the great Gothic building of its day, looked like then a Canadian Scots artist captured it.
And his painting hangs today in the Senate Chamber of the Canadian parliament.
A reminder of the sacrifice of Canadian-Scots, my grandfather among them, who fought in the Great War.
For the good people of Flanders , of course, the World War is not something in the past.
They live with it every day and on our visit we were told of a cow who had recently blown up in a field from a WWI bomb.
While members of our party picked up broken shells by the side of a field.
Eat, drink and be merry
Unsurprising then that the soldiers of the day ate, drank and got merry away from their front.
It was always thus and Ieperites today are rightly proud of their award-winning beer.
Which you can sample, and you better believe we have, on a guided beer around town.
In Bruge
Your Le Boat cruise will lead you to Bruges which if only Colin Farrell had been able to get out and about he’d have appreciated.
With its UNESCO World Heritage Site with countless museums and excellent restaurants to explore.
But most importantly chocolate.
Which, of course, you don’t leave there at the end of your Le Boat cruise.
With Brussels Airport shifting more chocolate than anywhere else.
A seven-night self-catered Belgium cruise, departing 28 Septembe, starting and ending in at the Le Boat base at Nieuwpoort.
Oboard the Caprice, sleeping up to six people.
It is priced from £959 per boat (was £1,379, saving £420). No experience required.
