Ferries from Lillo

Lillo is the strangest stop on the Scheldt: a preserved polder village of a few dozen houses, complete with its seventeenth-century fort and a windmill, standing entirely surrounded by the container terminals of the port of Antwerp. Everything around it was expropriated and demolished for dock expansion; Lillo-Fort was left.

De Waterbus calls at the jetty thirty-eight times a day, from 05:00 until 23:00. The crossing to Liefkenshoek on the opposite bank takes five minutes and costs €1 — Zone 4, the harbour crossing. Most sailings then continue south down the left bank towards Zwijndrecht and the city centre, about an hour away.

There is no road bridge here and the nearest tunnel is a long detour, so the waterbus is the practical link between the two halves of the port. Bicycles travel free, which makes Lillo a natural stop on the cycle route through the docks — and the village pub is the only one for several kilometres in any direction.