Duration of Ghent self guided walk?

I’m not familiar with the RS tour, but very likely you wil walk along the follow sights:

Counts Castel/Gravensteen, Patershol, Vrijdagsmarkt, St Jacobs Church, Town Hall, Cloth Hall with Belfry, St Baafs Cathedral, St Nicolaas Church, Duivelsteen, St Michiels Bridge, Old Harbour/Korenlei, Groentenmarkt, Veerleplein next to Gravensteen.

Without a visit and a quick walk you need something like an hour if you know the route, but at a more leasurely pace, taking pictures think about two hours. With visits and enjoying a drink you need ofcourse much more. For a nice view you can climb the belfry tower, there is also an elevator to the top.

Wil, that's very helpful. Thank you. Yes, those are the areas covered by his walking tour. Its good to know the Belfry has an elevator. I didn't realize that.

Wonderful, we do intend to take our time and not simply tick boxes but when you're travelling with three children and a senior, its very useful to have a ball park idea as to how long a walk will take. Any self guided walk worth its salt provides an estimated time to allot for the walk. As RS usually provides this for his walks, I think it was simply an oversight that it was not included for this one. The Bruges walk is said to be 2hrs plus time for two specific museums. The Grand Place walk in Brussels is said to be 2 hours as well. But no timing for Ghent.

I think that an estimation of the two hours in your case with three children and a senior, just for the walk itself will be okay. Enjoy Ghent as it is a nice historical place.

Happy travels!

I'd guess a couple of hours - depending if the kids or the Senior gets tired first.

RS walks are more the "hey, there it is" as you walk by the sight. I'm not familiar with the RS walk for Ghent, but having spent several weeks there, most everything worth seeing is packed into a pretty small area. However, if you're planning on actually going into some or all of these sights, it could take the majority of the day. Using the list provided by the previous poster ( a good one, btw), do the math: if you only spent 15 minutes at each sight and spent 5 or 10 minutes on average walking between each sight, it's going to add up pretty quickly. My personality is such that I love wandering through these wonderful churches and marveling at the artistry.....I tend to drive my wife nuts when we hit any church.

Not to worry...pretty much any square in Ghent has a ton of outdoor café/restaurant seating, so just add a few breaks to the walk and factor in a stop for lunch.

Thanks everyone for the responses. We do plan to take it easy and stop and visit along the way. I just kind of needed an idea as to casual walking time without going into places. I appreciate the help.

Thanks, all.