From Liege, If You Like, You May Penetrate The Ardennes - I Do Not
Know Whether Shakespeare Was Thinking In "As
You Like It" of this
woodland or of his own Warwickshire forest of Arden; perhaps he
thought of both - immediately
By way of Spa and the valley of the
Vesdre, or by the valleys of the Ourthe and of its tributary the
Ambleve; or you may still cling for a little while to the fringe
of the Ardennes, which is also the fringe of the industrial
country, and explore the valley of the Meuse westward, past Huy
and Namur, to Dinant. Huy has a noble collegiate church of Notre
Dame, the chancel towers of which (found again as far away as
Como) are suggestive of Rhenish influence, but strikes one as
rather dusty and untidy in itself. Namur, on the contrary, we have
already noted with praise, though it has nothing of real
antiquity. The valley of the Meuse is graced everywhere at
intervals with fantastic piles of limestone cliff, and certainly,
in a proper light, is pretty; but there is far too much quarrying
and industrialism between Liege and Namur, and far too many
residential villas along the banks between Namur and Dinant,
altogether to satisfy those who have high ideals of scenery.
Wordsworth, in a prefatory note to a sonnet that was written in
1820, and at a date when these signs of industrialism were
doubtless less obtrusive, says: "The scenery on the Meuse pleases
one more, upon the whole, than that of the Rhine, though the river
itself is much inferior in grandeur"; but even he complains that
the scenery is "in several places disfigured by quarries, whence
stones were taken for the new fortifications." Dinant, in
particular, has an exceptionally grand cliff; but the summit is
crowned (or was) by an ugly citadel, and the base is thickly
clustered round with houses (not all, by any means, mediaeval and
beautiful) in a way that calls to mind the High Tor at Matlock
Bath. Dinant, in short, is a kind of Belgian Matlock, and appeals
as little as Matlock to the "careful student" of Nature. If at
Dinant, however, you desert the broad valley of the Meuse for the
narrow and secluded limestone glen of the Lesse, with its clear
and sparkling stream, you will sample at once a kind of scenery
that reminds you of what is best in Derbyshire, and is also best
and most characteristic in the Belgian Ardennes. The walk up the
stream from Dinant to Houyet, where the valley of the Lesse
becomes more open and less striking, is mostly made by footpath;
and the pellucid river is crossed, and recrossed, and crossed
again, by a constant succession of ferries. Sometimes the white
cliff rises directly from the water, sheer and majestic, like that
which is crowned by the romantic Chateau Walzin; sometimes it is
more broken, and rises amidst trees from a broad plinth of emerald
meadow that is interposed between its base and the windings of the
river. Sometimes we thread the exact margin of the stream, or
traverse in the open a scrap of level pasture; sometimes we
clamber steeply by a stony path along the sides of an abrupt and
densely wooded hillside, where the thicket is yellow in spring
with Anemone Ranunculoides, or starred with green Herb Paris. This
is the kind of glen scenery that is found along the courses of the
Semois, Lesse, and Ourthe, recalling, with obvious differences,
that of Monsal Dale or Dovedale, but always, perhaps, without that
subtle note of wildness that robes even the mild splendours of
Derbyshire with a suggestion of mountain dignity. The Ardennes, in
short - and this is their scenic weakness - never attain to the
proper mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in
which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far
preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical
potholes - like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs - that
riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is
the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said
to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into
its sombre and dank recesses, but something may be realized of its
character and scale merely by visiting its gaping mouth at Eprave.
This is the exit of the Lesse, which, higher up the vale, at the
curious Perte de Lesse, swerves suddenly from its obvious course,
down the bright and cheerful valley, to plunge noisily through a
narrow slit in the rock -
"Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."
Rochefort, which itself has a considerable cave, is a pleasant
centre for the exploration of these subterranean marvels.
Altogether this limestone region of the Ardennes, though certainly
not remarkable for mountain or forest splendour, comes as a
somewhat welcome relief after the interminable levels and
chessboard fields of East and West Flanders, or of the provinces
of Limburgh and Antwerp.
End of Beautiful Europe - Belgium, by Joseph E. Morris
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