In the age of continent hopping, travelblogging and mass tourism it’s hard to conceive that a simple trip to the Belgian coast once proved an epic undertaking out of reach for the majority of people in this country. In the last decades of the 19th century, long before the introduction of compulsory education, in an effort to provide poor or weak children from the industrialised cities better personal hygiene, healthy food and above all clean air, individuals and organisations initiated holidays in the forest or on the coast.
