Deinze

"The Leie is the most beautiful river in Flanders and the most glorious as well." This was how poet Karel van de Woestijne described THE GOLDEN RIVER at the beginning of the 20th century. This was just one of the superlatives assigned to the Leie, due to the gold-colored and revenue-generating yellow flax that used to rot there for weeks on end.


The 202 km long river springs as "la Lys" in France, in the northern hills of Artois near the village of Lisbourg (West of Béthune). For almost 30 km, the still young river forms the French-Belgian border before entering our country at Menen. The Leie then flows past Kortrijk and Deinze to Ghent, where it empties into the Scheldt. After some severe floods in 1965 and 1966, nearly the entire Belgian stretch was canalized, 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 ability of the originally highly winding watercourse. But this also led to the creation of numerous beautiful nature reserves along the cut-off old river arms.

TCT WEMMEL