Lumaj wandelt

Intro:

A short hike, but counting in the additional distances to get to the start and get away from the finish, you'll have hiked a good 20 to 21 km.
We were told in advance not to expect a quiet idyllic hike in an untouched wilderness. That's why we took it as a little training after several weeks of inactivity, and as an introduction to the more interesting hikes that will hopefully come our way when we get to Deinze.
Be prepared to hike on asphalted and concrete roads in a region lacking in imagination, characterised by smelly agro-industrial production units for our pork chops ... that way you won't be dissapointed.

Not really a captivating hike, unless you're a fanatical admirer of the way the agro-industrial complex is evolving into a collection of sterile laboratories.

Back and forth:

We traveled by train from Antwerpen to Kortrijk. In these hard times for our railroad company we were lucky to start with a delay of only 5 minutes. That wasn't much of a problem because in Kortrijk we had more than half an hour to catch our bus. Meanwhile we could only hope that the engineman wouldn't forget to stop, and we certainly didn't look for a seat in the first carriages. We need to be patient for another few years and then we'll finally have that automated stop system that we're supposed to have since 15 years now ...
Bus 60 (destination Roeselare) left right on time and dropped us at Kachtem Halte.

We left the trail somewhere between reference points 27 and 28 and walked on to the station at Tielt. There we took the train to Gent - Landen. In Gent we changed for the train to Antwerpen.

The hike:

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As stated in the intro this is not really a worth while hike.

The area between Roeselare and Tielt has become an intense agricultural production center. The omnipresent farms have evolved into hightech production units where most activities take place inside huge concrete sheds. Heavy transport trucks  make their way from one farm to another. This is clearly a perfectly oiled industrial activity zone where means of production and outputs have definitely replaced the dungheaps, the milkmaids and the hayforks. Even the 'ordinary' milking machines have become obsolete because many farms now proudly advertise the presence of a milking robot.

Looking for quiet rural paths, nice landscapes and pictoresque hamlets in this kind of region is like looking for a needle in a haystack ... if it weren't that even the haystacks have dissapeared.
The first (but also the only) interesting place in this hike is the province domain 't Veld (the Field) in Ardooie. You won't find many fields, the name refers to how it must have looked a few centuries ago. Now it's a rare stretch of forest that we owe to the efforts of the lord of the castle at the end of the 18th century. The castle in its present form dates from 1781 and is private property. You can catch a glimpse of it from the entrance gate.
The domain features a number of fishing ponds. One of them is called 'Zeetje' (little sea). Originally it was a natural lake in the midst of the fields.

Apart from this brief but nice interlude in the hike, we can only add that during this hike the landscape slightly starts to slope, but you don't have to expect anything spectacular.

And finally: we strongly advise not to do this hike without the help of the topoguide or a gps track. The trail indications sometimes are lacking and without a description and / or a map you might easily get lost.