Actually, we had been searching for Sumo Wrestlers. Majestic bronze statues that used to stand on the Place Guy d'Arezzo, with green parrots fluttering around their enormous bodies. But they had vanished. All that was left were the nests of the parrots in the trees.
On a bench a woman was calmly reading a magazine, despite this unbelievable disappearance. She said that although she had no idea where the Sumo Wrestlers had wandered off to, she was on her way to an equally fascinating place: the fairy tale forest of Hallerbos ('the forest of Halle'), whose trees are bedded in a carpet of bluebell flowers, about 15km south of Uccle. However, just like the vanishing Sumo Wrestler statues, this phenomenon can be short-lived: the flowers only blossom from the end of April until mid-May, with each individual bluebell blooming for two weeks.
The first challenge on the quest to reach this enchanted place was to decipher the mystery of public transport as we made our way from Brussels Central to the city of Halle. The ticket seller at the station resembled sombody you would expect to find supervising elves in Santa’s workshop, with his white moustache, ancient spectacles and crackling voice. I swear, I almost saw his ears twitch as he watched us… Did he think we were worthy to find what we were after?
After making it to Halle we needed to find a bus! Yup, buses do go to forests! But the locals had apparently never heard of this strange forest, as they sadly shook their heads and wished us the best for our mad endeavour. Part of the reason could have been that nobody spoke French and it took us some time to realise that English was the second-best language of choice of Flemish bus drivers... Finally, the driver of Bus 114 showed us mercy and said that although he had never heard of any fairies fluttering around anywhere, he did know a place on his route that fit our description.
He dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. Had we not known what we were looking for, we would never have guessed what the forest was hiding! Leaving the deserted bus stop we turned onto the narrow and rough road Chemin du Bois de Halle ('the street to the forest of Halle'). As we started walking deeper into the canopy of the trees we heard the futile bleating of a bunch of goats, seemingly warning us off! Undeterred, we decided to press on! Eyes peeled we were now hot on the trail of these magical bluebells. Heading deeper into the forest we came across a big group of old German-speaking Belgian men who pointed us further in the direction of the beautiful bluebell carpets. They had walked all the way from Halle Station and had been exploring the forest for hours.
After some more meandering, kicking pebbles out of very inappropriate shoes and wrapping scarves more tightly around throats we were rewarded with the magical sight: The beautiful, magnificent carpet of bluebells. Passing by on the nearby road you could never have guessed what lay just a few metres away; a veritable ocean of bluebells on one side of an imaginary line and absolutely none on the other! This makes their presence even more magical. You can almost see the fairy folk going about their business in their kingdom... wary of crossing the bluebell boundary.
For those of you less into hobbits and more into Yoda you can picture the place as like the forest moon of Endor in The Return of the Jedi, with the bluebells providing the perfect purplish-bluish backdrop for fights between lightsaber-wielding rebels and laser-shooting stormtroopers. And crowds of little Ewoks playing in the fields. Or a romantic Princess Leia and Han Solo wedding in a clearing filled with blue and purple flower bouquets...
We spent hours bending over the bluebells, taking pictures and exclaiming about the beautiful forest, which is remarkably well hidden. There is a striking contrast between the bluebells and their more glamorous tulip cousins as tourists apparently line up each year at exactly the same time across the Dutch border in Keukenhof to see the colourful tulip fields. Many spend hundreds of euro making the pilgrimage to see these tulips in full bloom and so miss out on the hidden calm of enchanted Hallerbos.
Although unfortunately there are no monkeys swinging through the trees of Hallerbos, the bluebell carpet is for sure deeply saturated with Wild Honey (U2).
Eric Burger,
DG TRADE(With help from an anonymous, possibly elfin, contributor)
*So says Bob Kelso - Scrubs, Season 4 Episode 20
No comments:
Post a Comment