Along the Sambre in Sambreville

Meet Place Saint-Martin in Tamines, district of Sambreville. There is ample parking, except on Fridays, the weekly market day. There you can also get there in a few minutes (400 meters) from Tamines train station. Place Saint-Martin is dominated by the church of the same name surrounded by a poignant cemetery of the Shot. In this cemetery are buried 364 civilians who were executed by the Germans nearby on August 22, 1914. On the square near the Sambre, there is also an impressive monument commemorating this massacre. Departure on the left of the church and passage in front of the post office rue Saint-Martin. Here and there you can still see facades from the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods.

Ignore all side streets and after 600 meters you walk on the railway. Immediately after the railway bridge, turn right into Rue du Tergnia. Again, ignore all secondary roads up to the T-junction and now walk to the right. After 100 meters you have Notre-Dame Street on the left with Notre-Dame Church at the end. Leave Notre-Dame Street and continue on High Street. After 200 meters you will arrive at a level crossing. Walk right onto Rue de la Rotelée. Rue de la Rotelée is closed to vehicles after 400 metres. Walk straight between the poles and a dozen meters further, you walk on the asphalt again. Cross the main road 100 meters further and continue on Rue des Vignes. A little further you have the Sambreville barracks on the left.

Ignore the left exit and continue straight on the slightly narrower asphalt track. At the roadside you will find liverwort, deer hay, giant hogweed, royal candle and catnip. Where the asphalt stops, you continue on a poorly maintained path along the Sambre. Along the shore you can see an abundance of giant hogweed. 500 meters further, the path turns a few meters from the shore, it is soon parallel to the busy N90. Where the path stops, continue right on the path along the quiet and wide paved road (not the N90!).

After 700 meters, at a wide intersection, continue straight ahead and continue for 150 meters, just after and next to house number 101, turn right onto a dirt road. The dirt road becomes a narrow path and plunges for a moment. Walk to the left via a few meters of bat path. The path is now very muddy for a hundred meters, but quickly becomes drier and brings you back along the Sambre and to a large bridge. Go up the stairs and cross the bridge, cross the street on the other side, go down on the towpath and continue on the other bank, towards the church of Auvelais. After 450 meters you walk under a blue railway bridge. Immediately after the bridge, walk to the right and cross the car park to the Grand'Place and the beautiful neo-Romanesque church of Saint-Victor. After a possible visit to the church and/or one of the many taverns around the square, return to the Sambre and pass under the blue railway bridge to the large bridge.

Stay on the towpath, now under the bridge and on the right bank (upstream), towards Tamines. The towpath is a RAVeL (Walloon network of slow roads). After 500 meters you will pass lock No. 14 and two kilometers further you will pass under a bridge and pass a huge abandoned industrial site, the former Saint-Roch glassworks. On the water, you can see cormorants, black-headed gulls, mallards and Canada geese and sporadically a barge or pleasure boat. Along the water, you will meet a lot of cyclists, a few hikers and here and there a fisherman. After the industrial site, you walk under two railway bridges close to each other and 800 meters further under an older, rusty railway bridge. Stay 150 meters further at a fork along the Sambre. On the left you have a pond, formerly wetland, now fishing pond with picnic area and children's playground. A few hundred meters further, you arrive at the bridge of Tamines. Leave the towpath 60 meters before the bridge and cross the bridge to return to Place Saint-Martin.