AN EIFEL OF BEAUTY
Duration
Eight days
When
Summer
Why?
Excellent walking, cycling and sailing in fine surroundings
Out of sight, out of mind – gone were the medieval streets of crow-stepped brick houses, canals, gold carillon towers and chocolate shops so often associated with Belgium and its capital, Brussels, or towns of Flanders such as Bruges, Ghent and Ypres. Gone, too, were the expansive and sadly all too common military cemeteries of the Great War.
There we were, at the Signal de Botrange – the highest point in Belgium – looking across a vast plateau of khaki-coloured grass dotted with pink heather, the occasional Christmas tree and, beyond, the wooded slopes of Germany’s Eifel National Park. It could not have been less stereotypically ‘Belgium’.
A region of quiet beauty
The attractiveness, aside from its natural beauty, of this eastern fringe of Belgium is the unexpected; a region seeing far fewer visitors than its western counterpart, Flanders, and Brussels. With much of East Belgium protected by park status – Le Parc Naturel Hautes Fagnes-Eifel – it is scenic, likably desolate in places, and quite remarkable.
Our decision to explore this part of the world was made even easier by following the Vennbahn, a former railway line that transported coal and iron in the days of the Prussian Empire and
