Flemish Limburg is an area that I return to frequently on the bike. The attractive rolling countryside dotted with castles and villages makes for pleasant cycling. It’s an historic region, the town of Tongeren is said to be Belgium’s oldest and was a major Roman site. Nearby are the remains of Roman villas. This has encouraged some of the more deluded inhabitants to nickname the region, The Tuscany of Flanders.
Maybe that comparison makes sense after a few glasses of Flemish wine – a booming industry in a region famed for fruit growing – but it should really be known for the series of artworks that are embedded in the landscape. It was this that saw me stepping off a train in Sint-Truiden early one Sunday morning. Sint-Truiden’s Grote Markt is home to the 15th century Church of Our Lady and UNESCO listed 17th century Belfry.
It’s a glorious sight that was ruined the last time I was here by the Saturday market. This time a traveling ‘fun’ fair had set up in the centuries-old square. Disappointed, I set off into the Haspengouw, as the fruit growing area is known. Cycling between orchards of apples and pears, trees loaded with fruit, I made a stop for coffee at Kasteel de Motte, a mainly 18th and 19th century castle that dates to the 14th century.
The route east took me on an arrow straight old Roman road towards Tongeren, but a different history caught my attention at the Tjenneboom, or Tjenne Tree. It was here in 1667 that a local woman, Johanna Michiels, became the last person in Limburg to be burned alive for alleged witchcraft. The hysteria around witchcraft that swept Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries arrived in this rural area in 1532.
Over the next century, dozens of local people were murdered during a period of intense persecution promoted by the Catholic Church. It mainly targeted free thinking women. Today, Tjenneboom honors all of those who were killed with a rather lovely sculpture of a woman rising through the air. Heading to the historic town of Borgloon, I passed fortified ‘square’ farms and tiny hamlets, including Gors-Opleeuw.
I stopped to admire Sint-Martinuskerk and Kasteel van Gors, next to which is a vineyard. I’m certain Flemish wine will be on supermarket shelves pretty soon. Further on, I found myself passing the former Wynants syrup factory founded in 1879. At the heart of the fruit growing region, Borgloon became the centre of Belgian fruit syrup production in the 20th century … and locals gained the nickname strooplekkers, or syrup lovers.
There were numerous factories here, but by the 1970s only Wynants survived. It closed in the 1980s and has since been converted into a heritage site and museum. The attached brasserie was doing a roaring trade. Before arriving at the factory, I made a detour into a field. Here is a quite remarkable sight, Untitled #158, a circular wooden sculpture by Scottish artists, Aeneas Wilder.
Untitled #158 is close to the former 15th century Monastery of Colen and sits on a slight hill with views over the surrounding landscape. It doesn’t look all that exciting from the outside, but stepping into the interior changes perceptions of the sculpture. The presence of the monastery indicates that this was an important area, and the history of Borgloon dates back to the 11th century and the Counts of Loon.
Once a fortified town, ‘Borg’ and ‘Loon’ means ‘fortress in the middle of a wooded hill’, this small place makes for a good stop for a beer and bite to eat after exploring the sights, including the 17th century Stadthuis, which in the 11th century was the home of the Counts. The route to Sint-Truiden took me past my favourite sculpture, the delightful Zwevende Kapel, or Floating Chapel.
Overlooking a landscape of orchards from a small hilltop, the Zwevende Kapel is a joyful piece of art. The funfair was in full swing when I returned to Sint-Truiden, so I pulled up a chair in one of the bars on the Grote Markt and ordered a beer to weep into.
