Where to walk in West Flanders

West Flanders offers some beautiful landscapes and historically interesting locations for hiking enthusiasts. Here are some resources to help you decide where to walk in West Flanders.

Tourist Information Centres and tourist websites of course provide a wealth of maps, brochures, and advice on the best hiking routes in the region. But what about some personal recommendations?

My own recommendations

Living a distance away from West Flanders, I have not paid many visits to the area, but walks I have done and greatly enjoyed are:

• A historical walk around Nieuwpoort
• Zonnebeke Chateau to Polygon Wood
• Zonnebeke to Tyne Cot Cemetery
• The Belgian Coast from Ostend

As you can see, my experience of West Flanders is quite limited. So I thought I would pick the brains of a hiking local …

Walk with Jay

I recommend checking out Walk with Jay. It’s a really clear and useful Google Map created by Jessy. Jessy lives in West Flanders, knows the province extremely well, and has seemingly made it his mission to walk every kilometre of every hiking path in West Flanders! Well, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but Jessy seems to put his hiking books on every week to explore a new route in West Flanders.

On Walk with Jay, Jessy currently lists (and shows on the map) around 60 walking routes in West Flanders (plus a few in neighbouring north-west France). Helpfully, he categorizes them as:

• Gold: 10 of his “favourite” walks
• Silver: 25 or so “interesting” walks
• Bronze: 25 or so “good” walks.

This is helpful because if you are new to the area you can simply choose to look only at the Gold Medal walks and you can be guaranteed an excellent walk. If you have walked a lot in the area already then it probably makes sense to select all three categories and maybe choose an area you are not too familiar with.

Each walk clicks through to the West Flanders tourism website where you can download a PDF of the walk (to print out if you prefer a paper copy), and the GPX coordinates (to add to your GPS device).

In addition, on the Walk with Jay Facebook page Jessy describes his walks and adds his lovely photos.

Wandelverhaal

Wandelverhaal or walking stories is the initiative of enthusiastic West Flanders hiker Stefaan Bailleur. He wrote a guest post for Discovering Belgium a few years ago on How to spend a day in Mesen. Stefaan has amassed a huge library of walking routes in West Flanders (and elsewhere). You can access these on his website or his Google Map.

He also has a Wandelverhaal Facebook page which you can follow to keep up-to-date with his latest walks and photographs.

Enjoy the beauty of West Flanders

If you have never been to West Flanders and are wondering why Jessy and Stefaan spend so much time here, check out these beautiful photos of West Flanders, all by Jessy:

Where to stay in West Flanders

If you are planning a stay in West Flanders, you are spoilt for choice as the province is teeming with all sorts of accommodation possibilities. Personally one of my favourite towns in West Flanders is Ypres. It is so full of fascinating history, it has a number of great First World War museums in the town or nearby, and it’s a practical base from where to explore the area on foot. If you looking for a friendly, affordable and comfortable B&B in Ypres, I can definitely recommend La Porte Cochère. It’s run by Katrien and Steven, and Steven’s grandfather helped build the Menin Gate, so he has a lot of interesting stories to share.

I hope this short guide to where to walk in West Flanders is helpful. If you have any other personal recommendations for walks, let me know or add a comment below. Thanks. Denzil