Geographically diverse Belgium offers beaches, golden fields, charming cities and villages, but mountains might not spring to peoples’ minds. Those can be found in Eastern Belgium near the German border. 

The Ardennes are a mountain range covering Belgium, Luxembourg and France. Most of it is dense forest, but on the Belgian side there are also the high fens, Hautes Fagnes, at the altitude of 600 metres. The mountains at the Ardennes vary between 350-500 metres, but they can be extremely steep.

When the rest of Belgium is rainy and damp, there can be snow in the Ardennes.

Gone cycling

I decided to throw the bicycle at the back of the car and go cycling in the area for the weekend. Although the idea of joining Brussels’ Friday exodus didn’t seem appealing, I wanted to reach the hotel in Waimes by the evening and start early the next day.

I made it to Waimes in 2 hours, since there were surprisingly no jams or accidents on the motorways. Easiest way to Waimes is to take E42 and exit at Malmedy shortly after Spa.

I decided to take my mountainbike with me, as I intended to do some trail riding, but the paved cycling routes enable cycling with a normal bicycle and there were a lot of road cyclists.

My background is in mountainbiking, but nowadays cycling is more about exploring rather than riding over ruts and stones. On a ‘man & bike’ kind of getaway, I had to take into consideration that no one would find a lone injured family guy in some forgotten forest trail.

Chilling ride

Although it hardly rained during my weekend the temperature stayed around +10c and it was damp and windy. October is not the ideal s´month to do cycling in Belgium. Period.

I wasn’t too picky with the accommodation and reserved it in Waimes based on price. We had been in the same region before on a day trip with the whole family. Then we visited Botrange and drove back to Brussels via Robertville, Malmedy and Waimes.

My accommodation, a small inn of few rooms was located next to the cycling route, so it was what could be called ‘a minimum effort’ cycling resort. Instead of driving to the starting point, I could pull on the lycra in  the warmth of the hotel room and pedal away.

As the cycling routes follow an old railway line, they are in many ways above everyday life. Normal roads are crossed on a bridge or a tunnel and the scenery is one of people’s backgardens, farms and meadows.

There is of course a lot of forest, but plenty of fields with cows, sheep, horses and donkeys for kids and grown-ups to see.

The route is dotted with bistros and restaurants that provide high-calorie nosh. The village of Waimes is a node of two cycling routes; Vennbahn and RAVel.

I decided to head off east towards the Bütgenbach reservoir. The whole 15 kilometres towards the lake was a gradual, but brutal uphill to someone who had not cycled much. even the seniors were overtaking with their electric bikes.

Fairytale castle

Before hopping onto the bike I wondered off to Waimes centre in search of breakfast and stumbled upon the Tourist Info. They recommended the Reinhardstein castle located near Ovifat ski resort and the Robertville dam. Reinhardstein castle is on a beautiful site on the Warche river bank and worth seeing even if the castle itself is closed, as was the case on Saturday evening when I went there.

Beer

Eastern Belgium offers a lot of outdoor activities and accommodation. To balace off all the outdoorsy stuff one can explore gastronomy, because in a typical Belgian way there are a lot of restaurants with hearty food and local beers. I bought few bottles of Malmedy Triple and some others.

Trilingual Belgium

Dutch and French can be often heard in Belgium, but the third official language, German is widely used in the Eastern border. Near Waimes (Weismes in German) the language can change from a village to another. Every village has a bakery, either boulangerie or Bäckerei.

Dutch can be heard in the region as well as seen on cars’ licence plates, but English could be described as the 4th best spoken language. In the morning I spoke French in a bakery, but switched to German in a nearby village by lunchtime when I noticed the menus being in German. Why not.

Monschau

Since multilingualism and -nationalism is omnipresent in the border region, it’s worth a visit to see Germany too. As my hotel checkout was at 10 am, I decided to pack up and explore the surroundings by car. To be honest, the idea of changing clothes in the bleak weather really didn’t appeal to me.

Monschau, Montjoie in French, is a pictoresque town in the valley of the river Rur. The textile industry was the driving force in Monschau. The town with its lovely wooden houses was spared from the WW2 bombings that has made it a popular tourist resort. Vennbahn cycling route goes through Monschau.

Cars are banned from the town centre, but there are several car parks just few hundred metres from the centre. Monschau has a well-known Christmas market. Even on an average weekend it’s good to book hotels well beforehand.

Monschau is located at the Belgian and German border and for historical reason there are many enclaves and exclaves, meaning Belgium inside Germany and vice versa.