Hiking Around Bouillon with 24 People

A group of 24 never hikes as one group. After twenty minutes you've got a front, a tail and a middle pack deep in conversation. Around Bouillon, that's no problem. The trails come back together in three places, and from most of the homes in the valley you can start walking without driving first.

Pick four routes, not one

Whoever picks a single hike for a group always picks wrong. It's too long for the two who just had knee surgery, or too short for the four who came here for exactly this. So we give organizers four routes from the same starting point, all with the same finish time. Everyone walks what they feel like, and at four o'clock the coffee is ready.

Frahan, 8 kilometers

This is the route most people end up choosing. You start at the Frahan parking lot, descend past the tobacco museum to the river and follow the Semois back up over two bridges. Halfway along there's a farm with a bench and a view over the loop. Count on two and a half hours, three if the group likes to stop and linger. The path is wide enough to walk side by side, which matters more for a group than you'd expect.

Tombeau du Géant, 12 kilometers

From Botassart you climb to the best-known view of the Semois, the bend around a wooded hill that looks like a reclining body. Then you descend to the water. After rain that last stretch gets slippery, and then we send groups back up the same way. Twelve people waiting one by one on a slick trail is not a pretty sight.

"Four people went into Anlier and didn't come back until half past six. Since then we agree on a place, not a time."

Anlier Forest, 18 kilometers

For the four who really want it. Almost 9,000 hectares of continuous forest, with no village and few roads. Count on five to six hours and bring water, because there's nothing along the way. Cell reception drops out here, so agree in advance which parking lot they'll come back to.

Cordemoy, 5 kilometers

A flat path that starts at the old Cordemoy abbey and is easy to do with a stroller or with someone who has trouble walking. Along the route there are signs about the history of the Trappist monks in the valley. For grandparents with grandchildren, this is often the only route that works.

What we tell a group before they go

Sturdy shoes, even in July, because the trails are rarely dry. One paper map per subgroup, because batteries die. And an agreement about the end point instead of the time. We send the four routes as GPX files with the confirmation, so the organizer can forward them.

Where the routes come together

The three points where the trails meet are the bridge at Cordemoy, the Frahan parking lot and the square below the castle in Bouillon. Pick one of those three as your meeting point and not the house, because otherwise the first group ends up waiting an hour for the last. By the bridge there's a café that's open from April and has room for thirty people on the terrace.

Two things groups underestimate

The first is the elevation change. The Semois sits at about 200 meters and the edges of the valley at 400, so every route that heads to a viewpoint climbs two hundred meters. That's rarely on the signs. The second is the time a group loses at every gate and every stile. Count on ten extra minutes per obstacle once you're walking with more than fifteen people. For the Frahan loop, that adds up to half an hour on top of the estimated time.

When you're better off staying in

After three days of rain, the low stretches along the river are flooded and the path at Cordemoy is impassable in two places. In those weeks we send groups to the higher route near Botassart, which always stays dry. In July the valley can climb above thirty degrees Celsius, and between twelve and four there's little shade on the open stretch toward Frahan.

Want to know which homes are along these trails? Call or WhatsApp us. Ingrid walks them herself.