Four hours. That is the honest figure for the walk in, with a daypack, on a wet October afternoon, and it is the reason the ardennes vacation package half a day in on foot is priced for six nights rather than seven. Arrival day is spent arriving. You leave the parking place at the road head no later than one in the afternoon, because in November the beech forest is dark by four and the last 2.3 miles are on an extraction track that has no reflective markers and no reason to have any.
The lodge is stone, single story, with a wood stove that heats the whole thing and a spring line that runs to a tap in the yard. It has two bedrooms and a platform under the roof that sleeps two more. There is electricity from a small hydro setup on the stream, metered, enough for lights, a fridge and charging, not enough for a hair dryer or a kettle. Water is boiled. The nearest other building is a forestry shelter 1.8 miles down the valley, unstaffed, and the nearest village with a shop is 9 miles away by road, which is not the way you came in.
We book it. The forest office houses you, the vehicle carry is theirs, and we are the people who put the two together and hold the dates.
- Step
- Half a day in , Half a day
- How far from the road
- The lodge sits 7.4 miles from the last public parking place, four hours on foot on forestry track, with 1,180 feet of ascent spread over three long climbs.
- What the distance costs
- The surface is compacted forestry road for 5.1 miles, then a rutted extraction track for the last 2.3 miles that holds water from October onward; 1,180 feet of ascent, gained mostly in the first ninety minutes; empty the walk takes three hours, with a 35 pound pack it takes four and a half and most people stop twice on the second climb; the forest office runs a pickup up the extraction road on arrival day and again on day four, so a duffel of up to 44 pounds per person travels by vehicle and you walk with a daypack; when the extraction track is closed for felling, which happens on short notice between November and March, the vehicle stops 2.3 miles short and everything walks the rest, or we move your dates and the nights are refunded in full.
- Nights
- 6
- From
- $2,740 per person
- Shape of it
- forest lodge, four hours in on forestry track
- What is in the figure
- Six nights in the lodge, sole occupancy, two bedrooms plus a sleeping platform; firewood, split and stacked, roughly 0.7 cubic yards for the week; bag carry by vehicle on arrival day and on day four, 44 pounds per person each way; a walked handover at the lodge with the forest office, about forty minutes, covering the stove, the spring line and the meter; a printed route card with the three climbs marked and the two places the track forks badly; grid coordinates and a written description of where the phone signal returns; a stocked larder of staples on arrival, salt, oil, coffee, sugar, flour, rice
- What is not
- Flights, rail and any transport to the parking place at the road head; the parking fee, which is paid on the day in cash or by card at the machine; all food beyond the staples in the larder, and there is no shop within 9 miles of the lodge; drinking water treatment tablets or a filter if you would rather not boil, boiling is what the lodge does; a guide, we do not send anyone up with you and the walk is yours; luggage over 44 pounds per person on the vehicle carry, which we cannot add on the day; laundry, there is none; any porterage on the days when there is no scheduled vehicle, days two, three, five and six; taxis or transfers from the nearest rail station to the road head, which we can arrange to be quoted separately; anything at all after dark on the track, because the pickup does not run in the dark
- Who it does not suit
- Anyone unwilling to walk four and a half hours carrying a daypack, in rain, on a track that is loose stone in two places and ankle deep mud in another; anyone who needs a wheeled bag to roll; anyone traveling with a child too small to walk the full 7.4 miles, because there is no vehicle seat available on the carry; and anyone who wants a car within reach during the week, because after the arrival vehicle leaves there is not one.
Beech, slate and the shape of the ground
The Ardennes here is a plateau cut by narrow valleys, and the plateau is the thing that makes the walk what it is. You do not climb a mountain. You climb out of one valley, cross a shoulder of high beech forest, and drop into another, and then you do it twice more. Total ascent is 1,180 feet, which sounds modest until you notice that 740 feet of it comes in the first ninety minutes, on a forestry road with a grade that never lets up and never gets steep enough to feel like an excuse to stop.
The rock underfoot is slate and quartzite, and where the forestry road has been resurfaced it is compacted stone chip, firm in any weather. The last 2.3 miles are different. That section is an extraction track, cut for machinery, and it holds water in two long depressions that are ankle deep from mid October through March. Boots matter more than legs on that stretch.
The forest is almost entirely beech, planted and managed, with spruce on the poorer ground on the western shoulder. Beech forest has very little understory, so the visibility between the trunks is long and the light in late October is the reason people come. There are wild boar. You will see the ground they have turned over, in strips along the track, and you will very likely not see the animals. Red deer are audible in the rut through the second half of September and the first half of October, which is a loud, carrying sound at dusk that surprises people the first night.
The months this works and the months it does not
Autumn is the season and we say so plainly. Late September through the first week of November is when the beech turns, when the deer are audible, and when the track is firm enough that four hours is four hours. Outside that window the trip changes character, and in two months of the year we do not sell it at all.
Daylight is the constraint that catches people. In early October you have light until about a quarter past seven and a one o'clock start is comfortable. By the second week of November the light is gone by half past four, the one o'clock start becomes non negotiable, and if your train is late you do not walk in.
- Late September
- Deer rut audible at dusk, track firm, light until about 7:30, daytime around 62F
- October
- The month the forest turns, first mud in the two depressions, light gone by 6:00 late in the month, 52F falling to 43F
- November
- Dark by 4:00, standing water on the extraction track, stove lit all day, 41F and often 34F at night
- December and January
- We do not sell these dates, felling closes the extraction road on short notice and the walk in the dark is not something we will schedule
- February to March
- Available on request only, frozen ruts are easier than wet ones, but the vehicle carry is not promised
- May to August
- Long light and easy ground, but the forest is dense green, biting flies are constant near the stream, and the price is the same for a lesser thing
What we settle before you pay anything
Nothing is confirmed until the vehicle carry is confirmed, because the carry is what makes the week workable and it is not ours to promise. The forest office holds two vehicle slots for the lodge each week and they go in order. We ask for your dates, we ask the forest office, and we come back to you with a figure and a walk in time.
- You send dates and party sizeWe check the two vehicle slots against your week and confirm the lodge is free for six nights, usually inside two to four working days
- We send the figure and the route cardThe price per person, the exact walk in time for your arrival date, the ascent profile and the two forks where people go wrong
- You confirm and pay the depositThe forest office logs your bag weights, 44 pounds per person, and books the arrival day pickup and the day four pickup by name
- Two weeks out we confirm the trackIf felling has closed the extraction road, we tell you then, and either the vehicle stops 2.3 miles short and you carry, or we move you and refund the nights in full
Start with whatever is worrying you
The question worth asking is whether you want to walk four and a half hours with a load on the first day of a vacation, because everything else about this week follows from that answer. Tell us your dates and how many of you there are, and tell us what you are worried about carrying. We read messages the same working day, and costing the week out runs to two to four, because we have to ask the forest office before we can tell you anything real.