Hiking to the Baheyon again
A long weekend I thought but the week before we realised that Kabouter had school on November 10th and Jan had not planned a day off either. Damn, that exploded my idea of a long family weekend in the east of Belgium.
2 judo tournaments and Jan feeling ill squeezed the time even more but I insisted. Beertje and I left Kabouter and Jan behind on Sunday evening and left for 24 hours. And we made plans to go and walk and search the frog eggs at Beertje's request. Great, fine, I'd cater for that! I was glad he came up with a fun longer walk to do that we had not done in a while.
So on Monday afternoon I drive to the starting point near the German border in the Elsenborn area, when all of a sudden he exclaims I am driving wrongly. Turns out he had a totally different walk in mind than me, an even longer challenging one. I was thinking of the many toads and the Schwarzbach lake and he intended to go to the Baheyon falls where indeed we saw frog eggs last spring. Wow, we spot too many frogs on our walks :).
But he had carefully chosen boots to handle the muddy tracks to the falls, so I turned around and drove to the Ovifat starting point instead and recalculated our plans to track an extra hour of walking.
With just a few degrees on the thermometer, we were dressed for winter for the first time.
2 judo tournaments and Jan feeling ill squeezed the time even more but I insisted. Beertje and I left Kabouter and Jan behind on Sunday evening and left for 24 hours. And we made plans to go and walk and search the frog eggs at Beertje's request. Great, fine, I'd cater for that! I was glad he came up with a fun longer walk to do that we had not done in a while.
So on Monday afternoon I drive to the starting point near the German border in the Elsenborn area, when all of a sudden he exclaims I am driving wrongly. Turns out he had a totally different walk in mind than me, an even longer challenging one. I was thinking of the many toads and the Schwarzbach lake and he intended to go to the Baheyon falls where indeed we saw frog eggs last spring. Wow, we spot too many frogs on our walks :).
But he had carefully chosen boots to handle the muddy tracks to the falls, so I turned around and drove to the Ovifat starting point instead and recalculated our plans to track an extra hour of walking.
With just a few degrees on the thermometer, we were dressed for winter for the first time.
We descended from behind the Peak Brewery in the valley of the Ghâster creek which is a uneven path over tree roots, little rocks etc. And then an infamous muddy stretch where foot traces show that people try to find a way across all over but it remained as challenging as our first passage here. The walkers behind us, did not come further behind us anymore.
We fixed the announcement panel for the bottom of the ski hill in Ovifat back in place, as it was dislocated a bit further along the trail and then we continued for the remainder part of the trail which really follows in a gorgeous but narrow valley.
Once we reach the confluence of that Ghâster to the Baheyon creek, we climb up a wide trail up to the falls.
And then we still had a bunch of kms to go for what we both realised was the "boring long strecth" of the walk. First a goofy picture in the hollow oak and then we climbed up to the pine woods of the Botrange again.
Just when we launched Pokémon Go to keep us a bit entertained in the long monotonous alleys in the pine woods, Beertje spotted a brown frog. Ha! So this is a frog walk after all. Lots of frogg/toad eggs in spring, but we were very happy to spot a frog now months later. Pretty cool and well spotted by Beertje.
Our memory had erased it but before reaching the Peak Brewery again, we had to face another challenging mud stretch along a fire alley that forest trucks had clearly damanged deeply. We had washed our boots for nothing in the creek before.
As always after this hike, we were very happy to reach the car again and rest. And then drive back home to Kabouter and Jan who was still ill, to make dinner for all.
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