Tour the la swollen wild Warche

 

Part of the Tour de la Warche is the children's favourite walk, and we can loop it from our house, so I love it that we do not need to take a car to a starting point.  The rather small walk gives us quite some variety in landscapes and is different in all seasons: muddy in winter, bordered with wild daffodils in Spring and full of little creek fun in Summer. 

First we did some birdspotting above the fields where birds of prey are often circling in search of a good lunch. 

The Warche is fed from the Butgenbach lake with its power dam and can show quite some level variations although most of the time it is a little easy creek.  We should have figured already when we saw the lake at a very high level even in the direction where it can sometimes just be a creek and not yet a lake. 

The boys had picked out their rubber boots to go into the water but as soon as we descended to the water, we knew quickly that that wasn't going to happen.   The power dam must have had the gates open because we approached a high level wild whirling creek. Quite a difference from previous time. We found the hanging tree where we compared the water levels with last time when the boys climbed the tree.

Jan and Kabouter had recently done this walk by the 2 of them and had used the shortcut through the open field for the first time rather than climbing up the steep hill in the forest and making a wide tour around the field.   In the past the children had never dared to cross the field when there were cows and most of the summer, the field is invaded by camping Scout groups, but now it was empty and they loved to show the shortcut to us. 

Back at the Warche bridge which is a popular sort of improvised beach/ wading zone in summer, the water had calmed down a bit and the children could test their boots in the water a bit anyhow. And of course their portion of rocks had to be thrown into the water before we could head home.