Of trails and tales

The past few months have been a time of rediscovery for me. My love for long-distance hiking has returned! In previous iterations (I believe it was Jo versions 2.1 and 2.3), I did a lot of hiking and camping and long distance walking with the then partners who I shared both hearth and hobbies with (2.2 wasn’t really into all of that stuff and preferred hotels).

But things changed. A new release to version 3.0 saw me leaving the old life and starting a completely new one: single, with a dog, in the country. Long walks were still a given, but hiking and camping took a back seat as I learned to navigate this new configuration and the new environment.

After living here in the shire for three years, however, I have rediscovered that I actually rather like going off on adventures. I initially thought I had become a bit of a hobbit, particularly because my last dog did not like travelling anywhere we couldn’t walk. So, I had more or less lost the rambling bug. Besides, I told myself, who needs to go anywhere when you live in a wonderfully green place like this? Then Luna passed away, and I didn’t want to go anywhere for quite a long time. I focused on work, and trying not to kill people who talked in the silent coupe on the train.

But then along came Lucy: the dog that LOVES to travel.

So, like any good human, I had to make her little doggy life as entertaining as possible, and in the process of meeting her heart’s desires, I have found myself back out on trails in whatever the weather exploring the near and far corners of this country and the neighbouring one. We head off to go camping whenever we can, and have started making plans to spend weeks away in a tent!

The weekend before Christmas saw us zooming off early on Sunday morning to a range of high hills about an hour’s drive south of where I live. Called the Flemish Ardennes, they are a range of ‘mountains’ that span from Brussels in the east to Tournai in the west of Belgium and form a natural geographical, as well as a linguistic, border between Flanders in the north and Wallonia in the south. This is evident in both the place names that you come across and the people you meet on the trail. One group will greet you with a muttered ‘Goedemorgen’ while the next will greet you with a warm ‘Bonjour!’

It being a Sunday, it was no surprise that large groups of locals were already on the trails when we arrived at the car park at 10am. Belgians take their Sunday exercise very seriously and there were many groups of runners, walkers and mountain bikers on the trails, as well as a few kids’ birthday parties.

Our goal for the day was to complete a 20km round trip from Kluisbergen, through the Kluisbos, out through small villages and copses, around the Beiaardbos and back again. The weather forecast had looked pretty good the day before, with a high of 9 degrees celsius, and mostly sunny all day. But when we got to the starting point, it was a chilly 2 degrees, and the wind was picking up.

Undeterred, we started out with a good stiff climb to the top of the first hill. The first few kilometres were muddy and slippery and took us along a trail that was meant more for mountain bikes than boots, but it was a lot of fun and required a fair bit of concentration. The great thing about hiking with Lucy, though, is that she is pretty good at picking out the dryest footing, so as long as I stuck behind her, I wouldn’t lose my boots. I was, however, very happy to have my trekking poles with me, as apart from the mud, the leaves were so thick on the ground that they hid a number of potholes that would have taken my ankle out if I hadn’t been stabbing the ground in front me with every step.

After much upping and downing, we finally came to a stretch of level track that sloped gradually downwards to the end of the forest, and we meandered along that until we came out of the trees and beheld the rolling hills of the surrounding farmland. It was quite beautiful in the bright winter sun, and layers of haze suffused the colours into a soft pastoral scene. It reminded me of Dorset.

But then the wind picked up and the next ten or so kilometres were a test of endurance and patience as we wound our way around the trail through hamlets and farms and fields of freshly harvested corn. A lot of small brooks and streams had flooded their banks, so there was a fair bit of wading too. Luckily, the boots held up. We also encountered a surprising number and style of gates. Everything from gravity driven fall-and-shut, to merry-go-round, to the push-away-and-squeeze-in-a-corner-to-inch-round-and-hope-your-dog-follows-you type. I’m sure they have technical names. Some of them looked dubiously unsuitable for keeping anything in or out.

As we headed into the last quarter of the walk, we were quite done with the wind. It didn’t seem to matter which way we turned, it came at us somehow. Lucy was getting quite miffed, and we had to have a little sit down behind a hedge now and again to restore equilibrium. But, at last, we saw the treeline ahead and knew we only had a few kilometres to go back through the forest to get to the car. Of course, it chose that precise moment to start chucking it down, so we lost the wind, but gained the rain. It was still a beautiful stretch, though. The path sloped up at a calf-murdering angle, but the autumn colours blanketed the world and the trees towered over us.

Finally, we made it back up to the top of the first hill we’d climbed earlier and we wound our way back down the other side to reach the car and some much needed sustenance. Lucy snuggled up on the back seat and tucked into a meaty chew. I made do with a vegan pastry and some cold tea. It was manna from heaven.

It was also a fantastic final long trek of 2024. We’ve had a number of great walks this year, but this one was the cherry on the cupcake. So, here on the cusp of 2025, I suppose the most valuable lesson I’ve learned this year is this: when in doubt, go out. Get your boots on, find a path and walk those troubles away.