Walk between Escanaffles and Orroir

Total length of the hike: 8.25 km

Junctions (kp): 9 - 83 - 8 - 13 - 38 - 35 - short of pedestrian network - 10

It is best to start the walk at the Escanaffles cemetery (rue du Vivier), or in Mgr. Descampstraat, between junctions 9 and 10. During weekdays, there is interference with traffic related to the company of Galactic SA. This company (kp 9) produces lactic acid products and is located in the former Escanaffles sugar factory (in Avelgem, better known as "Slafie"). You pass by on your way to kp 83. Some striking odour nuisances invade you along the Scheldt migration route and some liquids also seep unhindered into the Scheldt water, but you won't soon forget the company's product. After the factory, you pass the dike of the tara basins of the old sugar factory. In these basins, the sludge was pulverized, from the rinsing of the applied sugar beets. On the last embankment, at kp 83, was the former tug-of-war station of the Vogelwerkgroep Zuid-West-Vlaanderen.
Here you will also find the elegant railway bridge to Avelgem, built at the end of 2014. This bridge is only accessible to cyclists and hikers and offers a direct connection to the nature reserves connected to the Avelgemse Scheldemeersen. However, at kp 83 we walk in the opposite direction, at kp 8. We pass under an old, very beautiful brick railway bridge on the Avelgem-Ruien-Oudenaarde line. The bed that separates from it and continues southwards goes towards Ronse. On this bed we would walk normally (Ravelroute) but it crosses the tare basins and has been diverted for this reason. It's a nice part of the road with many beautiful natural corners and flowery roadsides. Between kp 8 and kp 13 we walk a bit awkwardly along a busy road, without many trails worthy of the name. Luckily it's a short distance as we quickly turn left onto the Ravelroute which occupies the aforementioned former Kortrijk-Ronse railway line. The old Orroir station building and the junction of the deeply incised Rhosnes river show us the way to kp 38. The road to Ravel is divided into a strip of asphalt with a bridleway on the left. On the left you see the Kluisberg and on the right the valley of the river Rhosnes which offers a varied view of arable land, pastures and small groves. The Rhosnes itself is completely invisible, as it is deeply incised and very strongly dammed. Every blow or slow road is dead.
Near kp 38, where you see a beautiful church of Orroir against the background of Kluisberg, we take a parallel path to kp 35 on the right and walk along the south-west side of Amougies airport. It should surprise you why an occasional sport plane suddenly grazes right over your head. The negatives of this subsection are the scattered illegal dumping of stone waste. You cross the Rhosnes again and immediately see the very deep incision of this river in the landscape. This is certainly clearly visible in an easterly direction.
Between kp 35 and 10 we walk in an open, slightly hilly stretch (Noir Mouton) with intensive agriculture, typical of the silty region. Here, too, it is sometimes better to look at the landscape with a filtered view. In the distance, the outlines of Escanaffles and the three windmills of the Avelgem industrial estate can be seen. On the right, we can see, from a distance, the poplar grove that lies to the east in Le Vivier. It is a basin-shaped depression that we cross during an eastern loop along the Rhosnes Rejection. The bowl is a beautiful natural bulge in the Rhosnes valley and a very welcome image after the somewhat uncluttered arable landscape of Noir Mouton. Natuurpunt recently purchased 4 ha of meadows, with a unique old lock pattern (see "Landscape in pictures" in this issue). Here we briefly leave the hiking network and walk through a farm with some storage machines towards the Escanaffles-Orroir road. We pass a number of raised plots that separate the Le Vivier basin from the northern Rhosnes. We turn left on the road to take a slow road 20 m further on which gives a very good view of the historic Vivier moat and the plots of Natuurpunt. It's a nice end to the walk because a little later we find the starting point of our walk back to the cemetery or a little further into the centre of Escanaffles after kp 10.

This walk was designed by Dirk Libbrecht and has already appeared in Ivy 2018-3. The photos are by Peter Callewaert and Dirk Vergote.

Ivy is the member magazine of Natuur.koepel asbl. More info: http://www.natuurkoepel.be