The Ardennes: Jehaaaaaaaaay!

The Ardennes, Belgium

The Ardennes is a forested area in the south of Belgium known for attractive scenery. Much of Belgium is flat and covered in plains or crops, but the Ardennes is home to hills and valleys as well as more varied foliage. Simply driving through is beautiful in itself, and at times gave me déjà vu for how much it resembled New Zealand. Camping in the area was much more scenic than your average campsite. One night we perched right on the bank of a river. 

We covered a lot of ground to see the surroundings and interesting towns, but the great thing about Belgium is that everything is so close together. Whenever we wanted to go to a new place, we keyed in into the GPS and often it was less than fifty kilometres away. We drove through many little towns to reach what was on our itinerary, and one of those was Gros-Fays, which I translated into Fat-Fairies ("gros" being French for 'large' or 'fat'). This conjured up an image of rotund flower creatures hovering rough the trees, their wings buzzing from the effort of keeping them afloat. 

Crupet

In a tiny village south of Vresse, we found a Pain Shack, a.k.a. a bread vending machine. Quite novel. It was here that we went in search of windmills, as the Internet told me there were five nice ones. We couldn't find one, but temptingly a map in the town showed two so they had to be around somewhere!

Namur

Hearing that Namur had a "dominating fortress", we went to look for it. And did not find it. Well, we found the fortress, or remnants of it, but it was far from dominating. As the town itself was uninteresting, we drove onwards. 

Dinant

Dinant turned out to be what Namur should have been, with a great big fortress perched atop a tall and craggy cliff. Dominating, no? What was even nicer were the line of pretty buildings along both sides of the river. 

Lafôret

In a tiny village we took a walk down a forested path to the wooden footbridge Pont de Claies. This bridge is erected every summer (originally as access to the tobacco fields across the river) and only exists during July and August. It was quite rickety, and some of the wooden sticks had already broken or fallen through. This wasn't helped by the visitors who thought it highly amusing to sway from side to side to see how much they could make the bridge move - I stayed well away on solid ground as they did so. 

Rochefort

The drive from Rochefort to Bouillon was on our list as it was meant to showcase exquisite scenery. In the town itself, we ate average pizza across from the cathedral and didn't think much of the one main street. 

As promised, the drive was spectacular. However, the road itself devolved into a rocky, puddle-filled path that could be confused for a bicycle track (and it was confirmed to be a bicycle track when a group of cyclists had to pull into the shrubbery to let us through). Instead of turning around, which we considered multiple times, we persevered and eventually made it back onto a paved track. 

The first photo in my post is from this drive - shrouded in tree cover and bursting with greenery from the dense underbrush. 

Bouillon

The conspicuous Bouillon Castle was sold to the Bishop of Liege in 1082 by Godfrey of Bouillon to finance his participation in the First Crusade. Godfrey had a major role in the recapture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, and became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099 (he refused the title of King, believing the King of Jerusalem to be Jesus). The castle dates from 1065, when it was rebuilt over an existing (but destroyed) castle. The castle provides a nighttime tour as well as entry during the day, and I feel that they started up their smoke machine to get a dramatic glowing mist to float above the ramparts. 

This is also where the bouillon cube, or stock cube, was invented. Just kidding! That's simply a coincidence as the French word for boil is bouillir. 

An accurate historical representation of Godfrey. 

Shows at the Falconry take place four times a day, and feature eagles, owls, vultures, and of course falcons. While it was amazing to see how the trainers could teach birds to do certain manoeuvres, I mainly felt sad that they were chained up for much of the day. 

A sign at the entrance demonstrated that no dogs are allowed inside, lest they be carried off by birds of prey. 

Nearby, a more ruined castle lay open for all to explore free of charge. The old stones were slippery as it was raining when we visited, but we enjoyed the peace and quiet in the shell of an old château. 

La Roche-en-Ardennes

Another town with a more dominating fortress than Namur is La Roche-en-Ardennes, which has the added benefit of serving excellent smoked ham. The weather was patchy, so we spent our afternoon tucked up in a restaurant that played elevator music, eating ham and wondering if the bread basket was free. We tried to drive up to the fortress, but the roads were blocked off and confusing and we ended up driving away, as it would have been to expensive to go inside anyway. 

Jehay

A town with a name that's fun to pronounce, Jehay is home to the castle of the same name: Château de Jehay. Count van den Steen lives here, and while the structure is from the sixteenth century, it was greatly renovated in the nineteenth century. I didn't really like the distinctive brickwork, but some of the roof pieces were fascinating shapes. 

The Witch King of Angmar would happily swing this around at the end of a chain on the battlefield.