From vast wilderness to rural municipality

‘In the quiet Kempen on the purple heath’, every Kempenaar knows this line from the song by Armand Preud’homme. The purple heath has largely been replaced by meadows and cornfields, the sandy roads by asphalt and concrete, and the clay houses by tall brick buildings. Falconry has been exchanged for pigeon racing, and peregrine falcons now only reside in the church tower. The quiet endlessness of the landscape no longer exists, but walking here remains a pleasure. With the map of De Ferraris as your guide, you walk through the village center over the old ’s Heerenstraat and recognize here and there a building from that time. During this walk, you search for traces of the old crafts of Arendonk: the falconers, weavers, stocking makers, small-scale farmers, shepherds, and cigar makers. You see the old hedges that were supposed to keep the animals out of the hay meadows. Then you step away from the inhabited world, still following the trail of Count de Ferraris, into the wilderness. But today this has become agricultural land, a residential area, or a small pine forest. The roads are no longer loose sandy or muddy as they were back then, when carts needed extra large wheels to avoid getting stuck in the mud. The Dessel-Schoten Canal draws a large line through the landscape and is now indispensable, the old roads had to find a new route. De Ferraris wrote that Arendonk had nothing remarkable, except for the convent of the Franciscan sisters, which you see at the end of your journey. Was he right?

You can also walk the shorter version.