For a few years now, Arnout Hauben (a Belgian television producer) creates a yearly documentary in which he walks a special path together with two of his closest friends. Some of his adventures are a bit more exotic than others (he walked partly around the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea), but he dedicates most of his time to long-distance paths in Belgium or The Netherlands.
As part of the show “Dwars door België” (Crossing Belgium), he started walking the GR129 in Bruges and followed it all along until he arrived in Arlon, situated on the opposite side of Belgium. Arnout and his friends sleep in a variety of different accommodations during this trip such as hotels, B&Bs or a tent. Although being a bit less luxurious 😅, a tent has the advantage that it’s very versatile. You’re practically carrying your home all the way around with you without having to fear that you will be having to pay a lot of money for staying a night. A disadvantage of tents is the fact that you are not allowed to just pop it down anywhere you like (at least not in Belgium).
The “Welcome To My Garden” platform provides a fantastic solution for this problem. It’s a social platform that started in Belgium during the COVID-crisis of 2020 and provides an alternative way of traveling for the more traditional Belgian holidays (which are mostly spend in a warmer and more sunny location abroad) which were not possible due the travel regulations that were in effect at that time. Welcome To My Garden essentially provides a platform to which people can add their garden and open it up for hikers or cyclists to stay there free-of-charge for one or two nights. The only prerequisite is that you cannot arrive by car (you must be a “slow” traveler) and that you bring your own tent. During one of the episodes, Arnout makes use of this platform to stay in someone’s garden with his tent for the night. This seemed to me as a really cool way of travelling through Belgium and made my grow interest in leaving on a similar adventure one day.
My own mini-adventure
The idea of just taking of one day and start a solo multi-day hike through Belgium had already been growing in my mind for a few months now. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I was not able to go and leave on a trip before the end of August 2022. Every last weekend of August, there is a festival that’s being organised very close to my home causing me to run away and find a place to sleep elsewhere 😂. Since I had no plans yet, I decided this would be the perfect weekend to go on the mini adventure that I’ve had in the back of my mind for a few weeks now.
After searching the internet and some books with walking routes, I decided that I would start my adventure in Oudenaarde. Oudenaarde can easily be reached by train and is situated in the heart of the Flemish Ardennes, a region in Flanders that’s known for its beautiful sights and gently sloping landscape. I left home on Friday evening (August 26th, 2022) just after I finished working and started a walk of 10 kilometers to a small village called Horebeke where I would spend my first night.
By the time I have left Oudenaarde and got onto the smaller trails I was already starting to feel hungry and decided to cook my first meal. I bought a collection of these freeze-dried packets of food that can be brought back to life by adding hot water and stirring well. Although not being the most exquisite meal you can imagine, the German wild stew was pretty decent and gave me the energy to continue walking.
I didn’t see a lot of fellow hikers on my first night, but I suspect most people had something else to do on a nice and warm Friday evening in the summer 😁. Even though I just started walking, the first part of my solo hike was already breathtaking. Some of the sights that I was greeted with were fabulous and filled me with a lot of warmth and comfort. These are the things that we should carry with us all the time and think off in hard times. Even-tough I was not that far from home, I felt like I entered a completely different and soothing world.
I arrived in Oudenaarde station at around 5.30pm and arrived at the location of my first overnight stay around 8pm. As stated by the “Welcome To My Garden” platform, I made sure to contact the host of the garden that I wanted to stay in beforehand. Although most people on the platform react pretty quickly, this is also what I would recommend. Knowing that the host is expecting you, provides some extra peace-of-mind and makes sure that you can better enjoy the hike.
As soon as I found the house where I was going to stay, I ringed the doorbell and a very friendly women opened the door for me. She directly lead me to her garden and showed me where I could find a bathroom. Her garden was very eco-friendly and looked a bit wild from the outside, but I like this more than a tennis court where all the excessively green grass has been trimmed down to a few millimeters. If I wanted to, I was even told that I could pick some raspberries or apples from the bushes and trees growing further down in the garden (which I obviously also did 😅).
I prepared for the night, set up my tent and by 9pm I was ready to read a bit in a book and go to sleep. Today, I hiked a total of 10.5km in 2 hours. The exact course that I followed can be found on my Strava activity.
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