The shortened version of pictures of the hike can be seen @ http://picasaweb.google.com/guruprasad.katti/50KmBelgiumHike
Here is a description of this hiking experience:
I have been a regular member of a hiking group in IMEC. Thomas and Steven have been organizing these hikes extremely professionally. They decide upon the distance to be covered, dig up Belgian maps, identify picturesque locations en-route and we all are set to go. Thanks to their meticulous planning we all have been able to visit interior Belgium which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible. The distance of the first hike starts around ~22-23kms (Thomas calls it as warm-up) and increases by ~6-7 km every hike. All hikes this year have been beautiful but the one stands out in my memory is the longest 50km (49km on paper but in reality we must have crossed 50 by a margin) that concluded the first hiking season of 2008. The hike was scheduled on Sunday as some of us were also planning to join ICC’s trip to Trier-Germany on Saturday. Trier trip concluded with a grand dinner @ Buddha’s place and as a result with insufficient sleep and half opened eyes I reached IMEC at 8:15 AM (a bit late than others), dreaming to walk 50kms during the day. The plan of the trip was alluring. In the first leg (~16 kms) we were supposed to reach African museum in Brussels through Tervuren garden. Second leg (~17 kms) included photography @ Zaventum - Brussels airport. Thomas is an avid aviation photographer and I would have loved to get some tips to handle my new canon 400D. Actually, everybody in the group is a photographer and I was a new entry to the family so tips from anybody would have been welcome. The last leg was involved a castle visit but I more or less read it as a long walk back to IMEC-Leuven.
Tervuren-First Leg
Like most of the hikes, starting was through familiar IMEC Heverlee woods. As we reached Tervuren the beauty started to unfold. Roads in Tervuren go through lush green fields and are well-known for cycling. Undoubtedly we faced a lot of cycling groups along our walk. The biggest of them was Brussels bike rally. On the way, we also confronted an adventurous motor bike group enjoying their Sunday.
Tervuren Park is awesome!!! (can’t find a superlative word). Thirteen radially outward paths having age old tress on both sides meet at the centre consisting of three medium size stones. We took one of those thirteen to enter the garden and the opposite to reach the other end. At the other end of the park there is an African museum and also a canal. A very picturesque location….very ideal for photography. Tervuren alone is a spot to spend the entire day and I will definitely do it sometime soon. Many of the new group members joined the group here and some of them visited African museum. I do not visit museums unless somebody tells me it’s something special (read Louvre-Paris or Vatican Museum in Rome). Moreover, park landscape was so beautiful that I wanted to spend as much time as possible, possibly entire day, right there. But after lunch it was time to walk remaining ~33…..
Zaventum-Second Leg
The walk between African museum and Zaventum was good too. All along we were passing through freshly ploughed fields spotting aero planes which grew bigger and bigger as we approached the runway. After reaching very close to the runway we tried to spot all which flew during that time. Obviously most of the planes belonged to Brussuels Airlines. I felt disappointed that there were no fighter jets and would love to spot them in future. Some of the folks dropped out after this stage as it was a tad late and we were a bit behind schedule, yet to cover around ~16kms on our way back.
Final Frontier
Luckily this proved to be the most beautiful part of the trek. There were a very few townships and most of the way went through the woods. Thomas made a forecast that we may be lucky to watch the Sunset on our way back and he was proved dead right. Watching the red dusk standing amidst green fields was a very fabulous experience. Walking was tough for everybody now. I had a huge blister in my left leg and it was very painful to walk bearing it. If the nature would not have been this beautiful I would have got bored on the way…..and who knows might have caught a bus to Leuven midway.How about 100kms hike?
There was some talk of 100km hike during the walk. It seems there is place where a bunch of folks walk 100kms in a day. To me, that’s looks difficult to achieve. I can maximum stretch is to 60kms. Anything more than that calls for a bus or a train… To my satisfaction I would walk inside the bus during entire journey...
Next Day @ Office
Gratifying mind, sumptuous food and tired body is a very good recipe for a nice sleep. We obviously had all of that at the end of the day. All of us deserve a special award for coming to office the next day. I had blister in one leg while Sandeep had it on both legs. Both of us were limping in IMEC for almost a week. Next time when I walk 50 kms, I would see to it that I have 2-3 days to recuperate after the trek and the path is as good as Thomas and Steve chose this time around or else….
