Walking to Heverlee Bos and the Heverlee War Cemetary

Since I've been working much more in the recent weeks I've had less movement. Therefore I asked the boys past weekend to make a big walk.  There was some grumbling but Jan came up with the idea to walk to Heverlee bos, the part of woods connecting Meerdaelwoud with Leuven.  We looked it up and the closest border is truly only 3 kms away so quite feasible for both boys. 

We stepped through the neighbourhood, along the campus of Heilig Hart and UCCL and continued behind their domain and the army at the backsite of several convents in Heverlee. 

Heverlee War Cemetary

Once past the army and Heilig Hart, we reached the Heverlee War Cemetary where 1018 graves are to be found from WWI (30) and mostly from WWII (988).  We showed the children some of the graves, where they tried to figure out nationalities and names.  Visiting a war cemetary always makes me reflect.

Heverlee Bos

From there were turned right and walked along the edge of the woods.  Since we were just at the edge, civilization was never far but yet we got the impression to be in a vast stretch of wood. Just a pity that the nearby highway was so audible (and at some points visible).  But I couldn't understand why we don't come here more often. 

We didn't dare to divert too much into the wood in order not to tire the children so we quickly returned into the up-town neighbourhoods of Heverlee full of mansion like villa's near the woods.    At downtown Heverlee we waved to a train that left the station and much to our joy honked back to us when we were waving from the bridge.  

Ice cream stop at st Lambertus

Jan had researched our itinerary well so we arrived at the church where the bakery was open with also among other fresh ice-cream available for take-out.  A good reward after our 10km walk!