Lumaj wandelt

Intro:

This hike passes by the village of Sint-Martens-Latem. Reason enough to start the hike with high expectations.
Symbolism, expressionism, impressionism, pointillism, luminism, realism ... they're all art styles used by the famous Latem School to describe and express the beauty of this region along the river Leie.

The river is still there. But what would artists such as Servaes, van de Woestijne, De Smet, Permeke, de Saedeleer and Minne think today if they came to visit the place?

Back and forth:

This is an easy one to use the public transportation means.
Deinze can be reached by train. From Gent it's only a 15 min. train ride. The start of the hike is situated at the church in the center of Deinze. From the station it's a 1 km. walk to get there. You can take a bus if you want to.
And even Drongen has a train station. The hike passes there. A few minutes later you'll find yourself at the train station of Gent Sint-Pieters.

The hike:

Compared to the previous hikes on this trail, the situation is improving. The ratio paths/roads is getting better. But the situation still is not ideal ...

This hike takes you throughout one of the most wealthy parts of Flanders. Villages and hamlets such as Sint-Martens-Latem, Brakel, Deurle, Bachte-Maria-Leerne and Sint-Martens-Leerne constantly lead the rankings of the places with the highest per capita incomes. There's no escaping the vast residential quarters that during the last century have covered this region with a permanent exhibition of the latest exclusive trends in design and living.

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The hike basically follows the river Leie on its course from Deinze to Gent. The river flows in an extremely flat landscape which explains its whimsical course and slow current. Combined with other factors like the low levels of lime and iron in the water, this made the river very well suited for flax retting (loosening the fibre of the flax plant from its parent stem). From the 17th century on, that activity didn't only color the river yellow, it also brought economic welfare to the region (gold). 'Golden River' was an obvious name. But flax retting was also an extremely polluting activity. At its hight in 1913, a yearly 120 million tons of flax were retted in the river. The decomposition substances produced by this process could no longer get eliminated nor drained away in a natural way. The aligning of the river made the situation even worse. As a result, flax retting in the river Leie was completely banned from 1943 on. The only witness of this former activity we encountered along the hike, are the ruins of an old retting factory (somewhere between Brakel and Sint-Maartens-Latem).

The ones that still could enjoy the 'golden river' reputation were a bunch of artists from Gent who around 1900 came to cherish the region as a source of natural beauty and quietness. The poet Karel van de Woestijne started it all by glorifying the river as 'the most beautiful one in Flanders and the most glorious one too'. Albijn van den Abeele, George Minne, Valerius de Saedeleer and Gustave van de Woestijne came here to escape the hectic city life and found inspiration for their mystical symbolism. Emile Claus (the most important Flemish representative of the luminism style) joined them and came to live in Astene.
A few years later they were followed by a second group of artists: Constant Permeke, Jos Verdegem, Gust De Smet, Leon De Smet and Frits Van Den Berghe. They got famous as the Flemish Expressionists and were very influential on any later art forms.
Other artists followed and that's how the term 'Latem School' came into being. It's remarkable to notice how one region can be the basis for a multitude of art styles. It proves that the same reality can be interpreted and represented in many different ways.

What these artists didn't know is that their 'publicity' for the region caused a steady migration of rich citizens that all wanted to aquire their own little piece of 'natural beauty'. The irony is that the river Leie is now almost completely privatised between Bachte-Maria-Leerne and Sint-Martens-Latem. What were at the time small villages and hamlets have now become an almost uninterrupted collection of residential and exclusive quarters, golf course included. Amongst all those 'have-you-seen-us' countryhouses, it's hard searching for a former artist's house that has by now been turned into a little museum ... And if you're looking here for 'natural beauty', don't forget to bring a magnifying glass.