A Road to Somewhere

Belgium: Wallonia & The Ardennes

In 1965, the address John Lennon would have stayed at if the European Beatles tour of that year had passed through Tournai, Belgium is at 120 Rue de la Citadelle.I know this as there is a plaque outside No. 69, Les chambres atypiques de Nico Bush, announcing this non-event.

Les chambres is a quirky two-room apartment in a former asylum, on the outskirts of the city. Notwithstanding the shared loo and absence of any other facilities, it’s just fine for a single night. M. Bush is charming and helpful and as the gateway for a five-day tour of Belgium, it’s in the right square on the map.

But like the hyperbole of the Wallonian Tourist Board’s supplement to a Bike Magazine issue of a few years ago that encouraged me to give Belgium a proper go, a plaque stating that ‘John Lennon was never here but might have been’ looks a tad desperate and grasping. Trying to make somewhere perfectly pleasant into something it just isn’t.

As Charlemagne, Napoleon and Hitler found, Belgium ends up being part of many a European adventure. These days, UK bikers crossing the channel with a more peaceable intent usually have an ultimate destination that takes them through at least one of the kingdoms’ three distinct regions, these being Flanders, Wallonia and the culturally agnostic ‘Capital’ that includes Brussels.

And over the last twenty years, I’ve got to rather like it: decent roads, civilised people, strong beer and seriously good food where Michelin-starred dinners can be enjoyed at a 25% to 40% discount compared to the rest of Northern Europe.

But I’ve never made Belgium the focus of an entire trip despite the manageable scale and proximity to the UK. It’s an obvious candidate, particularly if you have a limited holiday allowance remaining, as I did in September 2023.

So after a leisurely start, an hour-long Brexit-induced queue at Dover and an early afternoon ferry, Tournai is only 85 miles away and the rest of the day stretches out. One unticked destination is Éperlecques. It’s from here that the flying bombs developed by the Nazis were fired at London with variable results between 1944 and 1945. If you’ve travelled the A25 motorway, you’ve no doubt seen signs to it, about forty minutes from Calais and hurried on, being too soon to stop.

It’s definitely worth a couple of hours and a minor detour though. The ‘blockhaus’ is the largest bunker in the world and where the deadly things were stored at stable, low temperatures to prevent unplanned combustion. Like many WWII sites in France and Belgium, the concrete monolith is largely unrestored which only adds to the pervading sense of evil. Nearby, a launch gantry has an earlier V1 ‘Doodlebug’ in situ next to a replica V2 rocket.

On Sunday morning in pale Autumn sunshine, I set off to follow religiously the route suggested by the tourist board. It sets much of the tone for the next few days: nondescript to moderately good roads punctuated by villages with ultra-zealous traffic-calming measures. Nothing wrong with that per se but no point guiding motorists into these areas, particularly those astride a Ducati Panigale V2 with its firm-but-fair suspension and arse-in-the-air riding position.

And Walloons do seem to love a street market on the Sabbath. So many of the villages were strewn with cars abandoned at jaunty angles and Belgians meandering about with no regard for anything other than the next pile of tat to sift through. Tempting aromas waft from various vans and stalls, but it’s too early for lunch.

Sunday is also not the best day to see the Plan Incliné de Ronquières or ‘Sloping Lock of Ronquières’. Opened in April 1968, its goal was to reduce the delays imposed by the fourteen locks that had hitherto been needed for the Brussels-Charleroi Canal to follow the local topography. This ingenious piece of grand-scale civil engineering consists of two large caissons mounted on rails, each measuring just over 91 metres and capable of carrying vessels up to 1,350 tonnes.

This is all made possible by a Heath-Robinson contraption featuring various counterweights, cables, capstans and pulleys that drag each caisson at a stately pace, up a vertical height of nearly 70 meters over 1,400 (a not inconsiderable 5% gradient), completing the journey in just 22 minutes.

Being a child of the Meccano age, I wanted to see it in action. But this being Sunday and Belgium never having adopted the ‘always on/we never close’ commercial mentality of the UK, there is no shipping activity. So this is one for a repeat visit.

Likewise, the Butte du Lion (Lion's Mound) that lies 10 miles northeast is one for another day. It’s a large, conical, artificial hill to commemorate the location where King William II of the Netherlands (then Prince of Orange) took a musket ball in the shoulder during the battle of Waterloo.

The hill offers a vista of the battlefield, and is the anchor point for the associated museums and cafes in the surrounding hamlet. But the climb to the summit and statue is 226 steps, the early haze has burnt off and it’s 34 degrees. As I’m clad in a full Rukka touring suit, carrying a helmet and a 30-litre Kriega pack, the ascent is a horrible, sweaty prospect and a reminder that sports bikes are really not meant for touring where anything other than haring around from one place to another is the order of the day.

And south of Bouzou Le Walcort on the N589 is what the day and route becomes. Crossing an impressive Brutalist dam at the eastern end of Lac de la Platte Taille, is about twenty miles of fast, swoopy bliss ending at the entrance to the race circuit at Chimay. Large sections of this road racing circuit are reserved today for the pleasure of Ford Escort Mk 1 enthusiasts, who are having some sort of love-in. So I ride around the bits I can and while it’s no Cadwell Park, the surface is top-notch and visibility good. Speed limits apply, of course, but I didn’t see anyone interested in monitoring them nor any speed cameras.

The incongruously named Queen Mary pub is open for business and serving a gloriously potent Pax Dieu beer. It’s poured in a distinctive, chamfered chalice as Belgians don’t have simple, generic ‘glasses’ for their more celebrated beers. Being a Sunday, dining options are limited but the casino brasserie on the edge of the main park rustles up a cliched but perfect meal: a slab of unctuous Ardennes pate followed by steak frites, served outside on the balmy terrace. As I lurch back to the smart little apartment I’ve rented for the night, I notice Taverne le Gallion is doing brisk trade so pop in for last, intense, Abbaye beer before retiring. Sat outside the apartment on the little terrace overlooking the town, the strains of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ float across the darkened buildings with a distant clarity, merging into an expertly curated playlist of stuff I’ve never heard before.

Thanks to Shazam, I now know this to include ‘Hey Joe (B)’ from Otis Taylor’s Red Meat cover album of Jimi Hendrix staples; Tony Joe White’s ‘You’re Gonna Look Good in Blues’, ‘Same Thing’ by Todd Wolfe and lastly, the coruscating ‘Darkest of my Days’ by Birmingham’s Big Wolf Band. Whether this is the selection of a Spotify algorithm or a Wallonian of supreme musical taste, I know not. But I’ve listened to the tracks since and all still stand up, suggesting it wasn’t my beer headphones adding some heavenly distortion."

On Monday, the Escort owners have all gone back to their mums so all but the start/finish line section of the Chimay circuit is open. I do a couple of near-laps in each direction before heading south and hugging the French border to Brûly-De-Pesche, a hamlet buried deep in the Ardennes. It’s ideally situated if you’re planning to invade France which is presumably why Hitler chose it as his forward command post in 1940. Although advertised online as open to visitors from March to November, a hastily scrawled sign informs that on Monday 11 September, it isn’t.

So I press on towards another public road circuit at Gedinne and marvel at the courage of anyone who would race on them. Like Chimay, there’s no run-off areas and the track just looks too narrow while the long straights suggest that terminal velocity could be well - terminal - in the event of even the slightest error.

Then, a quick lunch of a couple of Croquettes à la Chair du Homard et D’Ecrevisses (Lobster Croquettes) and spectacular views at the Pont De Vue, Rochehaut and it’s onto Le Tombeau du Géant (The Giant’s Tomb) a symmetrical hill in the meanders of the Semois river near Bouillon.

Formed some 400 million years ago, the name originates from the legend of a local strapping, Gallic hero who refused capture by the Romans. Understandably preferring to throw himself off the nearby cliffs of Rocher des Gattes rather than end up as lion food at the Coliseum, local lore has it that villagers found his body and buried him on top of the hill.

Hôtel Les Ardillières du Pont d’Oye is an immaculate, discreet little hotel near Habay-La-Neuve and the border with Luxembourg, but one whose restaurant doesn’t open on a Monday. Tripadvisor suggests a few places in Habay, but like a lot of information on this increasingly useless site, it can’t be trusted. The single dining option is limited to a kebab shop so I feast on a large shish and a Wall’s Magnum Salted Caramel Special Edition, washed down with a brace of bottled Leffe.

As is my wont, I have ‘The Economist’ as dinner reading matter and an excellent letter from Rob Macdonald of Richmond, North Yorkshire challenges an assertion from an earlier issue that ultra-processed foods are “cheap, tasty and abundant” suggesting that “addictive” would be a better descriptor.

He explains that Pringles crisps, for example, are “engineered to tell our taste buds that essential nutrients are on the way”. But they don’t contain those nutrients so the body demands yet more Pringles, probably accompanied by another bottle of Prosecco…

Inevitably, the end result is over-consumption, obesity, diabetes and a friend wailing that “eee izunt farkin’ wurffet”, or some other, soothing advice.

This considered analysis still doesn’t explain why the cartoon character on the tube is that creepy sub-Sergeant Pepper type, but it does account for why I’m now starving, trudging back to the hotel.

I hoover up an excellent breakfast the next day before snaking back and forth to Spa taking in Rochefort and Bastogne. By the road at Le Gleize sits a King Tiger II tank. Abandoned by German forces after the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, it was apparently procured for a bottle of brandy from American forces by a local hotelier. The roads are good but the meandering nature of the route suggests the tourist board were working too hard to create a path worth following.

Although there are some superb sections, there are just not enough of them strung together in any meaningful sequence to warrant seeking out again. But on a Ducati, with the sun on my back and an evening in Spa to look forward to, these are First World Problems of the highest magnitude so even heavy sploshes of rain as I enter the town are only a minor inconvenience.

Even on a Tuesday, only a few restaurants are open in Spa, and the two I know are effectively closed, hosting private events. Café Prôche is rated the #1 Restaurant in the town by TripAdvisor so I head there. It’s dreadful.

A strange amuse bouche featuring wizened shrimps, in a sauce that tasted as if it came from a bottle was OK at best. Likewise was the starter of field mushrooms that looked suspiciously processed and uniform with Ardennes ham, which was a broth and tasted of stock cube. The main course of grilled beef cubes though was so tough, it was inedible so got sent back, only to reappear with a bit more charring. It still withstood a serrated knife and was replaced, but this was just as awful.

In mitigation, I was assured everybody else who had ordered this dish was happy with theirs. If true, I can only assume they are very easily pleased. I asked for the bill and was charged €48 which I paid but was surprised no reduction was offered, given how obviously dissatisfied I was. This did include a laughable €17 for the starter and four small (100 ml) glasses of average wine as the whole sorry episode took just over two hours to play out.

Spa is well known for a microclimate that can cause sudden downpours and some lively moments at the nearby race circuit. Unlike Gedinne and Chimay, no sections of Spa are public but the road out of Spa towards Francorchamps and the subsequent N66 & N68 are tremendous. Or would be if it wasn’t for that pesky microclimate and a uniformed presence every few miles, equipped with average speed detection equipment.

Strange how the name of the local police force seems to reflect the perceived character. This lot, the Federale Politie, sounds like a bunch of prissy bureaucrats; Italy’s Carabinieri brings to mind a chaotic shower of hysterical narcissists while the French Gendarmarie conjure up images of bumbling Inspector Clousseau types. Only the Fatherland’s Polizei sound like they're not to be fucked with, which they aren’t.

I soldier on the planned route until Namur when I throw in the towel, the endless, drab, light-industrial hinterland west of Huy offering nothing. Instead, the E411 motorway makes light work of the last seventy miles to Ash, a tidy but non-descript town southwest of Brussels and home to the single-Michelin-starred Quai No. 4.

After the dining atrocities of the last two nights, the restrained interior and the clean, precise flavours of Maxence Bouralha and Charles-Maxime Legrand cannot come too soon. Both are alumni of the celebrated Sea Grill in Brussels and other stellar addresses. At €145 for their six-course ‘Signature Menu’, complete with well-chosen paired wines, it qualifies as good value for this quality. My exuberance at being fed properly again leads to gorging on the additional cheese course. Oh yes, and a little Trou Normand (Calvados) to polish things off. I may also have had a glass of champagne to start… All this pushes the damage up to €180.

While it’s good to end on a high note, Belgium as a subject for a motorcycle tour really doesn’t add up. Large tracts appear closed nearly half the week and is very densely populated in areas you can’t easily avoid without endless deviations. Factor in the most aggressive urban traffic-calming measures I’ve come across and it’s a 65% frustrating exercise from start to finish.

That said, it does have its moments but it’s ‘A Road to Somewhere’. There are things to see and roads to ride but it needs planning with surgical precision and dogged patience. Oh yes, fuel stops are a problem also and I was forced to fill up on a number of occasions, with what I assume was fermented sheep’s piss, such was the coughing and spluttering of Bologna’s finest. So, for me, Belgium remains either an amuse-bouche or the petit-fours for an odyssey of grander ambition rather than a destination in its own right.