Re: Re : Backpacking trip
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Louis VI the Fat
Belgium? :beam:
You'd be surprised.
One surprise is contained in a 1997 novel titled Bellevue/Schoonzicht, of De kunst van het wandelen ('Bellevue/Schoonzicht, or The Art of Walking') by Flemish authors Koen Peeters and Kamiel Vanhole. It's a novelesque report of their long walking trip along the Brussels Canal, right through the heart of the old industrial quarter that is now totally derelict and practically deserted. Belgium was the first European country to be industrialised after Britain. The images and sounds and colours they evoke - of deserted train stations, gone dark red from corrosion and grown over by vegetation the colour of fresh lettuce, of empty factory halls still echoing the sounds of tough, virile blue collar work, and of old bridges with wood panels and Art Nouveau decorations - are absolutely fantastic. And in the background of this quiet, worthy graveyard made of copper, scrap iron and concrete, there are the constant sights and sounds of the cranes and draglines that are creating the new, post-modern Brussels of diplomats and tourists, 'like giant Tyrannosauri swallowing the remnants of a great civilisation'. Some stark imagery there.
It's something entirely diffferent, I know. That's Belgium for you. Love that country. I've always wanted to do that walk myself, never got around to it.
Re: Re : Backpacking trip
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Louis VI the Fat
Belgium? :beam:
But seriously. If it's the hiking you're after - as a goal in itself instead of a cheap way of getting from A to B - then I would recommend the Pyrénées. There is a God and on the eight day he created France to supply humans with all the good things in life. One corner of it he created as a hiking heaven, the Pyrénées:
Looks good...:yes: