Walking on the Roofridderpad in Affligem

It had been months since I had seen one of my best friends...it's not easy living in opposite sides of the country , both being busy and both reserving as a result sufficient time to rest. 

But early May the children had a day school closed and I took the day off and so did my friend and we met up halfway at Affligem. It was a beautiful sunny day so we walked the Roofridderpad walk together , which seemed to offer nice variety of landscapes, a feasible distance (6.2km) and a bistro at start/end point. 

So at a sunny noon we drove to Affligem looking for the abbey. For some reason I was convinced in my mind to be driving to the abbey of Grimbergen...ah all those Norbertine beer abbeys in Belgium, I mix them all up. So while my GPS told me we were very near, I was confused not to see the 2 gothic towers approaching. And the flagship Grimbergen pub was nowhere to be seen either.  

So anyway, we stopped at the Affligem Gasthof and had a nice lunch in the garden after which we were full of energy to go walking. The walk starts at the abbey but there's no big "start" sign of so...but there's small signs that send you on  your way...first a bit through the residential streets of Affligem but then you get into a nature area. It's well documented along the way. 

No gothic tower above the Affligem abbey

The walk tends to go over very muddy trails. I had read about it at other blogger's and they really needed rubber boots. I made a guess in this dry weather and risked it without boots and we were totally fine. But the trail shows a lot of wooden passages that show the need to cross in usual soggy soil. 

Much to my surprise I learned that there are a couple of hop farms around the abbey. Awesome. Local sourcing is cool. 

We treated ourselves to some more nice drinks at the end of the walk before driving home in the traffic jam of Brussels.