Tour route: Loop around Oudenaarde (138 km)

This route starts and finishes at the Donkvijvers of Oudenaarde, for a 138 km round trip through the Flemish Ardennes and a small part of the Pays des Collines.

We kick off in Oudenaarde, the picturesque carotid artery of the Flemish Ardennes where honorary citizen Adriaan Brouwer is suitably honored with a beer of the same name, and where the cycling museum ‘Tour of Flanders Center‘ attracts tens of thousands of (cycling) tourists every year. Because although a sun-drenched Market is the dream location to make that ‘Brouwerkes’ soldier, it is of course the heroism surrounding the Ronde that gets the pedal knights in the saddle. We immediately set course for Welden and Etikhove, good for several tens of meters in altitude before we take a detour around the emerald green Muziekbos.

When the foliage has disappeared in the mirrors again, we cross the N48 between Brakel and Tournai and we briefly brush the city center of Ronse, before we cross the relief-rich language border in the direction of the witch village of Elzele. This village is notorious for the folklore surrounding the ‘daughters of Satan’, in particular Quintine Dele Clisserie, who was burned at the stake in 1610. Although the people of Ezele soon regretted the execution: Quintine cursed the village before the flames had completely consumed her, and five years later Ellezelles was struck by the bubonic plague. Those who managed to avoid the Black Death’s scythe were eaten a year later by – we’re not making it up – a werewolf. Although that last story probably stems from a locally brewed Quintine beer too much…