Lys

"The Lys is the cleanest river in Flanders and the most glorious too". At the beginning of the 20th century, this is how poet Karel van de Woestijne described THE GOLDEN RIVER. This was just one of the superlatives that the Lys was given, because of the yellow flax that had been rotting there for weeks.

The 202 km long river rises as "la Lys" in France, in the northern hills of Artois near the village of Lisbourg (west of Béthune). Over almost 30 km, the still young river forms the French-Belgian border and then enters our country at Menen. The Lys then flows past Kortrijk and Deinze to Ghent where it flows into the Scheldt. After several severe floods in 1965 and 1966, almost the entire Belgian course was canalised, cutting off no less than 25 river meanders ...

A drastic intervention in the beauty of the landscape that also adversely affected the natural self-cleaning capacity of the originally strongly winding watercourse. But this is also how the numerous beautiful nature reserves along the old river arms were created.

jutlandskater