Wallonia Special
Treasure chest Wallonia: On the UNESCO cycle route through the south of Belgium
Sven Bremer
· 26.03.2024
The lift rushes down into the dark. The ride in the cage down to 30 metres below ground is damn fast and pretty shaky. This is where the first shaft of the former Blegny coal mine was carved into the rock. 30 metres is just the beginning; they dug up to 750 metres underground here in the north-east of Wallonia and mined coal for centuries. Nobody has been digging in Blegny-Mine for over 40 years. The former coal mine was shut down in 1980. In 2012, it was recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, along with three other mines in Wallonia: Le Grand-Hornu near Mons, Bois-du-Luc near La Louvière and Bois du Cazier near Charleroi.
One cultural highlight follows another on the UNESCO cycle route
And the mines are by no means the only UNESCO World Heritage Sites in this diverse and therefore exciting region: a Neolithic mine, a cathedral, several belfries, historic ship lifts, Belgian beer culture and colourful and historic carnival events have also been ennobled as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. The UNESCO cycle route launched in 2020 runs along these World Heritage Sites. A route of almost 500 kilometres in total from Tournai at the south-western tip of Wallonia to Blegny, not far from Liège. "For me, this is the best way to experience this region in the truest sense of the word," says my fellow cyclist and Belgium fan Barbara. "You cycle through a fantastic landscape where very few people would expect to find such a variety of cultural highlights."
Blegny is the only coal mine in the whole of Europe where you can still go "underground" as part of a tour, even up to 60 metres below ground. Water drips from the ceiling and footsteps echo off the walls. Until the 20th century, even children had to work here for more than twelve hours a day, six days a week. Coal dust ate away at their lungs, while the unhealthy climate and hard labour ravaged their bodies. The trip inside the mine is fascinating and oppressive at the same time. We literally suffer with the former "miners", immersing ourselves in the history of mining in the Walloon coal belt. The region was one of the most important centres of early industrialisation. In terms of technological progress, Wallonia was always hot on the heels of the English - and far ahead of Germany.
But heavy industry is now history; mines, steelworks, most of the cloth and glass industry, gone, shut down, wound up. "Wallonia has been through some tough times and has had to completely reinvent itself. In many cases, it has succeeded really well," says my companion.
Wallonia is a colourful mix of nature, industrial culture and architecture
In any case, this region, which is largely unknown in Germany, is a real insider's tip, a veritable grab bag with a mix of an often very pretty landscape, fascinating industrial culture and architectural highlights from different centuries.
It all starts in Tournai. The city competes with Tongeren for the title of oldest city in Belgium. A church is said to have stood here as early as Merovingian times around 500 AD; today the Notre-Dame de Tournai Cathedral stands on the same site, combining a Romanesque and a Gothic section to form an architectural masterpiece - a UNESCO World Heritage Site, just like the belfry from 1188 right next door. The belfries are often mistaken for churches. However, the mostly medieval bell towers are secular buildings that symbolise the power of the bourgeoisie and whose bells once warned of enemies or fires.
Slow down and roll along on the RAVel
From Tournai, we roll through undulating farmland in the province of Hainaut and cycle along the banks of the Nimy-Blaton-Péronnes canal towards Mons. These riverside paths are also labelled as RAVeL. RAVel stands for "Réseau Autonome de Voies Lentes" and translates as "autonomous network for slow-moving traffic". It could also be translated as "slowing down and rolling along in an almost meditative state". At least that's what it feels like. On the Canal du Centre, we reach one of the four historic UNESCO ship lifts and make a short detour to the world's largest ship lift at Strépy-Thieu, a 117-metre-high colossus made of steel and concrete, where the ships overcome a height difference of around 70 metres.
The initiators of the UNESCO cycle route have divided the route into eleven stages. For those interested in culture, even these might not be enough, as there are so many interesting museums and sights along the route. Culture buffs, on the other hand, can of course simply cycle past them all and still get their money's worth. Because cycling on the RAVeL is so good and because the scenery gets prettier the further east you go. If these RAVeL cycle paths do not run alongside a canal or a river, then they are mostly disused railway lines. They have few gradients and are usually well tarmaced. You hardly have to worry about orientation, and cars don't get on your nerves either. Because the Walloons don't have much to do with everyday cycling or travelling by bike. Cycling races are a must, they can't get enough of them. Numerous international cycling classics such as "La Flèche Wallonne" or "Liège-Bastogne-Liège" pass through the region. Thousands of them line the roads and cheer on their idols. But these strange leisure cyclists with luggage don't (yet) have much use for them in the south of Belgium ...
The route leads past UNESCO World Heritage Sites that could not be more different. And you cycle from one extreme to the other. From Thuin onwards, we have just enjoyed the idyllic scenery along the meandering Sambre before Charleroi greets us with mighty industrial wastelands and the Sambre has to continue flowing locked in concrete. Rusty and bent railway tracks lead to nowhere, the ruins of blast furnaces, factory buildings and cooling towers are overgrown with undergrowth. Charleroi was once named the "ugliest city in the world" by a Dutch newspaper. You have to come to terms with that. The people of Charleroi, the "Carolos", have come to terms with it.
Creativity instead of desolation is the order of the day. Street artists can let off steam here, the art scene is colourful. But it takes time: Charleroi was almost a ghost town after the decline of heavy industry. Today, the city is alive again, still licking the wounds of the past, but looking to the future. A university campus, run jointly with Brussels and Namur, has been created to attract young people to Charleroi.
After Charleroi, the route leads to Dinant on the Meuse, where not only the famous Leffe brewery has its origins, but also where a certain Adolphe Sax was born, the inventor of the saxophone. This is where the UNESCO cycle route reaches the Ardennes at the latest, and from here onwards it gets tough if you don't have an e-bike under your bum.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site in Belgium
Sometimes you are amazed at what the UNESCO experts honour as a World Heritage Site and what they do not. It is not always well-known sights that are honoured, as is the case in Belgium. The Atomium in Brussels, for example, is not included; and to make it even clearer with an example from Germany: The Brandenburg Gate is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but the rather unknown Fagus Factory in Alfeld, Lower Saxony, is.
Wallonia is home to 21 World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage sites in Belgium. Since July 2021, the time-honoured spa town of Spa has also been one of eleven "Great Spas of Europe" to be awarded the World Heritage title. Sometimes the award is not given to one building, but to a whole series of buildings - such as the Belfrieden in Belgium and northern France, the four historic ship lifts on the Canal du Centre and the four former mines in the former coal belt of Wallonia - important witnesses to industrial history. Finally, there is the honour of being designated an intangible world heritage site. This could be Neapolitan pizza or Belgian beer culture. It is not the world-famous carnival in Venice, but the carnival in Binche in Wallonia, the Doudou folk festival in Mons and the traditional marches of Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse.
Each country can make proposals that end up on a so-called tentative list and are recognised or rejected by the World Heritage Committee, often after years of examination. Depending on whether the committee recognises an "outstanding significance for humanity" and wants to place it under special protection.
Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai is the only place of worship in Belgium to have World Heritage status. There are also the Neolithic flint mines in Spiennes. The Mundaneum in Mons, which presents a collection of twelve million bibliographical documents and was once described as the "paper Google" by the French newspaper "Le Monde", has been recognised as a UNESCO "Memory of Humanity" site. And finally, the landscape in the Famenne-Ardenne region was declared a UNESCO Global Geopark.
The time-honoured thermal spa resort of Spa lies in the middle of this picture-book landscape. Spa became famous primarily through the Russian Tsar Peter the Great. In 1717, the ruler, who was suffering from liver disease, spent a few months in Spa. He then left again in good health, and Spa eventually became the epitome of the spa industry, the name even becoming synonymous with wellness and thermal cures worldwide. In July 2021, Spa was also recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with ten other "Great Spas of Europe".
The contrast could not be greater. From Spa, we take a diversion in the direction of Blegny. To the left and right of the track, numerous "terrils" rise up into the sky. These are the former spoil tips, once nothing more than huge black boils in the landscape. Almost a thousand of these artificial hills stretch over 200 kilometres through the Walloon coal belt. They have long since been greened and are now species-rich biotopes. The heat stored in their interior and the mineral content allow lilacs and orchids, among others, to flourish on the scree mounds, surrounded by numerous butterflies and birds.
Officially, the UNESCO cycle route ends at the Blegny mine, but we continue on to lively Liège. Here, too, the chimneys are barely smoking, but Liège is burgeoning with its futuristic Calatrava railway station and an extremely lively cultural and gastronomic scene. We sit on the banks of the Meuse and toast our successful journey on the UNESCO cycle route with a Belgian World Heritage beer. The Curtius beer from Liège is perfect for celebrating: not only does it taste great, it is also sealed with a cork like a champagne bottle.
General information & tips for the UNESCO cycle route
The UNESCO cycle route leads right across Wallonia, the French-speaking region in the south of Belgium. The starting point, Tournai, is close to the French border, while the destination, the former Blegny coal mine, is just outside Liège. The route is almost 500 kilometres long and runs mainly on designated cycle paths (RAVeL), farm tracks and low-traffic roads. Cyclists can find their way around with the Node systembecause the cycle route is not yet signposted - but that is to come.
The west is flat to undulating, but it gets hillier in the Ardennes, Belgium's only low mountain range. And even though the "architects" of the UNESCO cycle route have gone to great lengths to find paths with as few gradients as possible, there are extremely steep sections to tackle in the Ardennes. Never long, but sometimes so brutal that it is definitely advisable for untrained cyclists to tackle the tour on an e-bike.
GPS data
The GPS data for the cycle tour through Wallonia can be downloaded directly from the Delius Klasing tour portal.
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Arrival
If you want to travel by train and your own bike, you have to take the regional train via Aachen, Welkenraedt, Liège and Brussels to Tournai. It is not possible to reserve a parking space. If the spaces are occupied, travellers must "take the next train", as the Belgian railway website succinctly states (www.belgiantrain.be/de). Sometimes Belgian trains are equipped with comfortable bicycle compartments. Sometimes you have to heave your bike up into a cramped bulky luggage compartment (particularly difficult with e-bikes), which also has to be opened and locked by the train crew. A bike ticket for a one-way journey costs four euros.
Recommended accommodation (all of which have been awarded the "Bienvenue vélo" label as bike-friendly accommodation)
- Tournai: Hotel Alcantara, Rue des Bouchers Saint-Jacques 2, www.hotelalcantara.be
- Mons: Martin's Dream Hotel Mons, Rue de la Grande Triperie 1,
www.martinshotels.com/fr/hotel/martins-dream-hotel - Dinant: La Merveilleuse, Charreau des Capucins 23, www.infiniti-resort.be
- Spa: Hotel Radisson-Blu, Place Royale 39,
www.radissonhotels.com/de-de/hotels/radisson-blu-spa - Liège: Van der Valk Congrès, Esplanade de l'Europe 2, www.congreshotelliege.be/de
Food and drink
There is one on every other corner chip shop ("Friture")but Wallonia has much more to offer and is a real gourmet destination.
It is something like the national dish throughout Belgium Chicory baked with cheese and ham.
In Liège you should visit the Special meatballs (boulets à la liégoise) which are served with a "Sauce lapin" (with Sirop de Liège).
To optimise the 500 different types of beer are brewed in Belgium. The spectrum ranges from top-fermented Trappist and Abbey beers, some with ten per cent alcohol, to so-called spontaneously fermenting beers (Lambic and Geuze), fruit beers such as Kriek (made with cherries) and Blanche, an unfiltered wheat beer brewed with orange peel and coriander. We enjoyed the various Blanche beers, the Saison Dupont and the Curtius beer from Liège the most while travelling.
Literature/Maps
Cycling map of the ADFC, Belgium, Walloniascale 1:150,000, 9.95 euros, www.fahrrad-buecher-karten.de
At the local tourist information centres you can obtain the regional RAVeL cards.
