Right. A minor moan and a couple of explanations.
There has been passing reference to Eurotunnel. We had carefully organised our travel so that we had time to drive to Bruges, park somewhere sensible, reassemble the bike and take it down to Brussels in plenty of time for a leisurely supper in the square. That involved a 2:30pm train, for which we were about 90 minutes early, as the M25 and M20 behaved themselves. But the tunnel was, to coin a phrase, completely and utterly buggered. "Technical problems" gave way to "Unplanned inspection" to "Delays". We watched the carpark gradually empty as others with less patience than us gave up on their weekends away or went in search of an overpriced ferry. We eventually made it onto a train at 7:20, which meant that we would arrive at Bruges at almost exactly 10pm. The penultimate train from Bruges to Brussels left at 9:57, with the subsequent one at 11:22.
So we just carried on driving to Brussels. We were there at about 10:40, but had no charge on my phone (the USB connection in the car seems to have discharged it) so had to make up a route into the centre. At 10:50 we stopped, R jumped out and walked to the Grand-Place (about 10 minutes) for the meet-up.
@BalkanExpress walked her back to the car, helped me find a carpark and then went back for the rest of the ride. Fortunately we knew that the Fridays wouldn't go without us.
The minor moan is the amount of pavé we went down. Yes, it's lovely to have a bike tour of Bruges, but unless you're on a sensible Belgian bike you need to concentrate so much on not going arse over tit on the cobbles you really can't take it in. I know a tandem doesn't help that. But please - an alternative route next time!
The incident with the Gits of Maes will go down in legend, I suspect. The path from Bruges to Ostend is a towpath. It's extremely smoothly tarmacked, but not all that wide - perhaps wide enough for 3 abreast if you're riding slowly. I'd had a mini-rant at
@Gordon P saying that I thought club cyclists should just go somewhere else, because it's a proper shared-use path, and then we had an incident where a couple of dog-walkers crammed themselves onto the verge to avoid us (singled out and going slowly to let oncoming traffic pass safely), that oncoming traffic and, at the same time, a small bunch of roadies overtaking us too quickly.
So when the Gits from Maes overtook us in a very ill-disciplined and over-large peleton (about 30, I suspect) I decided I'd have a bit of fun, especially as we were in our final 10km. I found some adrenaline and wound up my legs, quickly caught on the back of their group and sat there for a bit. They were going at typical road-club speed (about 18mph), and it was an impressively diverse bunch of people - both in age and in sex. But they had asbolutely no self-discipline or courtesy and no thought at all to train their riders in the art of riding in a group.
So I started overtaking some of them.
@rvw made it absolutely clear that she was not involved at all by sitting upright and blowing her nose. Eventually we found ourselves in the middle of their bunch, a fat bloke and a grey-haired woman carrying (some) luggage and not wearing their fancy-dan kit. (Yes, all 30 of them were wearing club kit). We got some very dark looks indeed. Unfortunately their ill-discipline and the narrow and mildly windy path meant that there was no opportunity to do what I really wanted to do - overtake them all and blast them off the back wheel of the tandem. So when they were eventually forced to sort themselves out by an oncoming group we let them go on their way.
I had a less than satisfactory steak and chips in one of the local eateries in Brussels, but the glass of Hoegaarden and glass of Calvados drunk in memory of the ride helped diminish my disappointment 
.
but 
after dawn with the most wonderfully atmospheric mist. 
Sorry about the forbidden language Els
