| W.E. Bowman
A final hike in the Ardennes was held Sunday October 19th. Meeting point
were the (in Belgium) worldfamous waterfalls at Coo, on the Ambleve river.
Herman could not attend, for family reasons. Or was he too tired from his
birthday party the night before? Happy Birthday Herman and welcome to your
new age group. Life starts at fifty...
Other absentees were Jordaan , Geert and Davy. But we had two extra
participants: Ben (who is going to trek in Nepal this fall) and Lieve again,
already there on the previous walk.
Hedwig was still suffering from a drastic haircut. Unlike Samson he did not
loose his physical powers. Although somebody suggested he may have lost his mind.
Frank was the only one in shorts. He is training to be the first man who
scales a mountain above 7000 meters in shorts.
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As always the weather was superb, albeit a little fresh.
On none of our Ardennes trips we had the occasion to test
our foul weather gear!
For this last occasion, Omer had chosen his three star (***) walk. When you
add the altitude differences of all uphill parts it has a vertical altitude
gain of 1020 meters.
On leaving Coo some participants were unable to located
the gigantic waterfalls. Again, as on previous walks, it shows that
orientation is not the strongest point of some Himlungers!
From the start we went straight uphill to the Belvedere Thiry, This got us
warmed up immediately.
Herlinde seemed to prefer the 'telesiege' though, but she was forced to walk
with the rest.
Downhill it went then to Stavelot. We crossed the Ambleve river to the next
hill, the Cote de Stokeu, famous from the cycle classic Liege-Bastogne-Liege. A lunch stop was held at the Ferme de la Bergerie.
Downhill again then through autumn-coloured forest, then a small off-path
section with stream fording
and then up again to the small hamlet of Aisomont. The Tour Leroux was the
next viewpoint, not everybody
could muster the energy to climb the tower.
In Trois-Ponts we visited a local cafe to prepare for the last ascent of the
day, to the Upper Reservoirs of
the Coo hydro-electric power-station.
Omer, the infallible navigator, missed
the exact right turn. Probably the two Hoegaerden's in Trois-Ponts had
blurred his vision a bit. This made the final ascent less steep than he had
predicted.
From the reservoirs it was all downhill to Coo. Well, maybe there were some
negative downhill (some say 'uphill') sections included still...
This omitted the final uphill part of the walk, but it was getting late
already
and Omer would probably have lost all sense of direction after a visit to
the Hoegaerden cafe in
La Gleize...
Herlinde was last to arrive in Coo because of bruised feet. She had walked
in brand new shoes.
In Coo we had dinner in one of the tourist-trap restaurants. Food was slow
to come, which gave
us of lot of time to discuss. Christel worried that her -40 C rated sleeping
bag will not arrive in time
at Base Camp (our mountain gear sponsor). In that case we will need two
extra sherpa's to keep her warm in the tent high up the mountain.
There are only 10 days left now before we go!
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