... or the remains of Rouge-Cloître, a XIV century Augustinian abbey, hidden inside the ancient Forêt de Soignes, which stretches for 4,421 hectares around Brussels.
It turned out that this was but one of the monastic communities established within the confined safety of the dense forest, which once abounded in wild game.
Soon, I discovered others - La Cambre, Groenendaal, Val Duchesse, and Kapucijnenklooster - and thus was born my fascination with exploring these vestiges of the Middle Ages in Belgium. Or, better say the lands that metamorphosed from Gallia Belgica into Burgundian Netherlands, Habsburg or Catholic Netherlands, Spanish Netherlands, Austrian Netherlands....
Some of these abbeys were pale shadows of their former glory, others were still clinging to their centuries-old vacation. Erstwhile oases of prayer, that produced many, if some long-forgotten Saints, but also of scholarship, art and mystery. (Who wasn't enamoured by Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose?). Today, if remembered at all, they are known more often than not in connection with world-famous Belgian trappist beer. Often, all they evoke is thus the image of a pot-bellied jolly monk.
I set out to discover more about these places and this journey took me to far reaches of this country.
This blog is a record of the many travels I have made to the far reaches of Belgium. I hope you will find it interesting. If it will inspire some of you to follow in my footsteps, I shall delight in this.
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