Tell me about your favorite spots for an active(*) vacation in Belgium and/or France along the Belgium border?
(*) Active means for us: hiking - long/challenging single-day hikes are fine, preferably circular ones. Biking if not too hilly AND if safe - I'm a panicky biker who dislikes aggressive cars sharing the road with me. Culture - museums and similar that have English or German explanations. Lovely cities to visit.
Boosting welcome. We will have a car. Timeline: very late May to mid-June.
For cycling your best bet is to use the Ravel network, built on abandoned railway lines and thus away from car traffic: https://ravel.wallonie.be/en/home.html
Note that in the Wallonie at least bicycle use is not permitted on hiking trails unless specifically signposted.
@fedops oh, those are great recs, thank you! We are mainly collecting ideas for the moment - our original plan was a different one but we had to change, so now looking for something close to NL and we've never properly been in Belgium...
@vicgrinberg Ardennen? Lots of wonderful hiking in forests, around places with names like Sourbrodt (where they speak French on one side of the main street, and German on the other. And have a Fallen for the Motherland monument in these two languages)
It's certainly very cycleable too, even, say, from Aachen.
@vicgrinberg
The war memorial https://passchendaele.be/ is great!
Cities: Lille is nice.
Ghent is amazing but probably too far out of the way. (the same for Bruges)
Certain parts in Belgium are straight flat and are great for cycling
Feel free to ping me if you have more specific questions.
@ctlaltdieliet Ghent and Bruges are great - we'd be coming from NL!
I am mainly trying to find what would be especially nice right now - we had originally planned a week in the Pyrenees, which does not work out for multiple reasons, so are trying to re-plan now to something within ~4 hours driving from Leiden.
@vicgrinberg@ctlaltdieliet seconding Ghent and Bruges. Ghent was great in that walking anywhere near the center was like touring an art and architecture museum the whole way. I took a bicycle architecture tour in Bruges which was amazing fun
@vicgrinberg you’re right! that’s weird, he has both older and newer programs that seem to still be online. Sorry for giving you “een dooie mus”, I hope it pops up somewhere
@venite No worries - I will look out for this program and in the meantime his other ones seem also interesting in general? And also to have subtitles which are SUCH a help for understanding for me :D
@vicgrinberg have you been to Luxembourg? The cultural life in the city is great and Mullerthal is great for outdoors.
I thought the description applied to areas close by.
The province of Luxembourg in Belgium is also quite nice for outdoors with a few rivers where you can (easily) kayak
@CCochard We've been to the German side of Mosel last year with some Luxemburg mixed in - definitely want to come back more on the Luxemburg side of things but not sure if this year!
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