Hedges and Meadows in East Belgium

You need an E-MTB and a permit for crossing the military training grounds at Elsenborn. The permit is free and easy to get - apply at the Elsenborn military command. You may only cross the camp, if the 'red drum is down', which means that no military exercises are in progress.

The grounds of the camp are situated fully in the Hohe Venn (Hautes Fagnes), and quite beautiful - provided you can ignore all the targets that have been put up for shooting practice. We leave the camp at the waypoint Panzer (tank), which actually is a roundabout. Through meadows fenced in with hedges, we make our way to Bütgenbach, which is a destination in itself. The Lake of Bütgenbach attracts many visitors especially in the warm season. Before Bütgenbach, a short stretch of the trail, along the Warche stream, is on an alpine path with steep inclines, and you may have to push the bike for a few meters.

We continue to explore the Ardennen, and descend to Schoppen, and later Heppenbach, the southernmost point of our trip. Note that you can take shortcuts between Schoppen and Heppenbach, albeit on asphalt roads with modest traffic, while our track is mostly on forest and agricultural roads, often on gravel or dirt.

From Heppenbach, we climb to Honsfeld. If you had enough of cycling, you may take the easy (though somewhat longer) route via the RAVel back to Kalterherberg. However we continue to Mürringen, still with a lot of up and down, and mostly on narrow forest and agricultural tracks, to Rocherath.

From here we make our way to the eastern end of the Camp Elsenborn, and explore more of it until we return to Kalterherberg.