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Places we’ve visited last weekend:
Saturday, July 19th: the antique shops in the Kloosterstraat, Antwerp (B). We parked our car between the Vlaamse Kaai and the Waalse Kaai (free parking!). This quarter is also known as ‘t Zuid. The place is packed with art galleries, fashion houses, design stores and museums. It also has some of the city’s most trendy bars and restaurants to offer. The Kloosterstraat is only a few steps away. Here you can find a wide array of antique shops. The axis Kloosterstraat-Hoogstraat also acts as a link between ‘t Zuid and the Grote Markt (main market square). We had dinner at Chez Fred, a cosy little restaurant located at 83 Kloosterstraat. Sandrine had a huge bowl of Caesarsalad and I went for the seared tuna steak with zucchini. Veeeeery nice!
Sunday, July 20th: the Gentse Feesten, Ghent (B). This is probably Belgium’s biggest city festival. We went to see the Dutch group Hotel perform on the Polé Polé stage. They played a spicy mix of African and South American music. After the concert, feeling thirsty and in the mood for some more exotic vibes we went for a Cuban style cocktail at Mosquito Coast, an international travellers cafe and one of our favourite hangouts when in Ghent. Then we joined Sandrine’s parents at Faki, one of many Turkish restaurants located in the Sleepstraat. They serve the best lahmacun (Turkish pizza) I’ve ever tasted. We ended this perfect day sipping fresh mint tea in the Berber tent at the Baudelopark.
Monday, July 21th, Belgium National Day: the Zwarte Beek nature reserve, Beringen (B). It was just one of those typical Belgium National Days, with the rain pouring down for hours on end. Here in Belgium we even have a name for this yearly climatological event: the ”drash national”. Nevertheless, we decided to go for a walk in the Zwarte Beek nature reserve, situated in the little village of Koersel (Beringen). It is managed by Natuurpunt, a non-profit organization active in nature conservation and management. An 8 km footpath led us thourgh the marshy valley of the Zwarte Beek (it translates as “black brook”). Part of it is a corduroy road which seems to float above the wet forest floor. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…
The banks of the Zwarte Beek
The corduroy road
This is a follow-up to Culture Morte.
The Fond des Trottes trail (n° 34) follows the banks of the Ourthe river. Heading in western direction and hearing the low murmuring sound of the river at our left, we found ourselves walking at the foot of a steep cliff. The cliff is in fact one side of a rather narrow promontory overlooking the Ourthe valley. At one point the cliff became less steep. Here we left the Fond des Trottes trail and followed the trail called Porte Aïve (n° 23) uphill towards the triangular plateau.
The place is called Ti-Château. It used to be an Iron Age hill fort/Roman campsite, on two sides protected by the steep cliffs of the promontory and cut of from the rest of the plateau by an earthwork. As we explored the plateau, I immediately recognised the remains of the earthwork consisting of two parallel ditches. Traces of human activity on this site even go back as far as the Neolithic. The site is protected by law since 1962.
In Belgium and France this type of hill fort is called an “éperon barré”. They are common in the south of Belgium and in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, but as far as I know there’s only one example of this type of Iron Age fortification in the north (Dutch-speaking part) of Belgium: the Kesselberg, just a few km/mi west from where I live. It’s situated on the far end of a fossilized sandbank (see Home Sweet Home). Here also a part of the earthwork still exists.
Remains of the Iron Age defensive earthwork at Kesselberg, Belgium
While studying historical landscapes, it’s fascinating to see how man succeeded in taming the natural forces that surround us. During the Middle Ages in Europe man built large dikes to defend his village or city from devastating floods. He planted trees and hedges in order to prevent sand dunes from shifting and swallowing his arable land. Not only was he able to protect himself from these forces, he also learned to use them for his own benefit, e.g. constructing water- and windmills and later also hydro-electric stations, solar panel fields… Nowadays, man has even gained control over the weather, shooting silver iodide and dry ice into our atmosphere for cloud seeding. However, the only natural force he never learned to tame is the one we call TIME. Although rarely regarded as a force (certainly not in physics), this photo clearly shows the real potential of time.
It was taken on a day trip in March 2007 in the village of Hotton, situated in the south of Belgium. We followed the trails called Fond des Trottes n° 34 and Porte Aïve n° 23, and stumbled upon this old signpost. The sign indicated that the trail we were following lead to the Voie des Morts, or in English: the Trail of the Dead. Spooky! Anyway, I’m lucky to be alive to tell the story. To be continued…
