The western branch of the European hiking trail E 2 starts in Galway and travels all the way through England (using several local trails) up to Dover.
Originally hikers took the ferryboat from Dover to Oostende in Belgium. There the trail joined the Flemish GR 5A path. However, this ferry service isn't available anymore, so the hiker now has to travel to Calais.

From Calais there are 2 possibilities to join the GR 5A trail in Flanders.
Either you can use the European Coastal Path (E 9) from Calais to De Panne. From there on GR 5A South becomes the trail to follow.
The other possibility is to go from Calais to (nearby) Gravelines. There the GR 128A trail starts, leading you up to Watten. From Watten GR 128 will be your guide to Kemmel. From Kemmel you have to follow the GR 5A South trail.

The western E 2 branch then follows GR 5A South all the way to Bazel (situated in the Belgian province of East-Flanders). From Bazel a special E 2 connection trail is available, taking you around Antwerpen to a park in Deurne, called Rivierenhof. The distance of this connecting trail is only 25 km. and it's documented in the topoguide GR 5A South (written in Dutch).
From the park Rivierenhof you briefly follow the GR 12 trail up to Schoten. There you switch to the GR 565 trail until you reach Zoersel where finally GR 5 will be waiting to take you to Nice.
Zoersel is the place where the western branch of the European E 2 trail joins the eastern branch. The latter reaches Zoersel via Hoek van Holland and Bergen-op-Zoom.

Our hikes on all of the above mentioned GR trails are listed under their respective categories (GR 5A South, GR 128, GR 12, GR 565). We've completely hiked the Flemish part of the western E 2 branch.

The map below shows the 2 hikes we made on the above mentioned E 2 connection (25 kilometers), as documented in the GR 5A South topoguide.
The links to the individual hiking reports are listed below the map.