“Every season I go back to the Hautes Fagnes, one of our oldest and wildest landscapes. Here you can truly feel the wilderness, which is rare in Belgium. The peat attracts a unique fauna: capercaillie, western marsh harrier, shrikes... and you can even see deer. Add to that the surrounding forests, open plains, vistas, and heath, and you walk through a succession of biotopes in a single day.”

“I find autumn the most beautiful. Then the peat turns red and brown, typical threatening clouds hang over the plateau, and the oak and birch forests light up brightly in orange and yellow. It looks almost Scandinavian. It is also the time of the rutting of the red deer and the crane migration. The latter is hard to predict, so I keep an eye on the Facebook group ‘Crane Migration over Belgium and the Netherlands’. If you're lucky, a wave of migration comes straight over the Fagnes.”

“I usually start from the boardwalks at Baraque Michel. That is a popular spot, but as soon as you go deeper into the peat, the number of walkers quickly decreases. You follow the wooden paths to the Helle, a clear, winding creek. After a while, you leave the boardwalk and head north, past Noir Flohay, where the iconic dead pine skeletons stand. That view remains impressive every time. A little further on, you reach Geitzbush, the core area of the local wolf pack. I personally haven't seen a wolf yet, but I have seen fresh tracks and droppings! Back at the Helle, you go through a valley with rocky, rough sections and climb steeply up, alongside the Hertogenwald. That old pine forest still has a real, dark woodland atmosphere, unlike the production forests. Eventually, you find yourself back on the peat plateau.”

“This loop is about 20 kilometers, but there are plenty of opportunities to shorten it along the way. That’s the fun of the Hautes Fagnes: no walk feels the same. Sometimes it’s a bit too wet, steep, or muddy, but that’s precisely what I love – the feeling that nature determines where you can go and not the other way around.”

Practical: 19.4 km, but can be shortened. Starting point: Baraque Michel.