GR 15: Eupen - Jehanster (21 km)

GPS Track Details

Track length	20.89 km
Total ascent	511 m
Total descent	444 m

Difficulty Level	3/4 - Medium
Categories

Travel info

Eupen is easy to reach by train from Brussels and Liège.
The walk starts at the Eupen Bellmerin bus stop (in the lower town), which you reach with TEC bus 725. You take that bus at the train station or in Eupen Bushof. The bus ride takes less than 10 minutes.

The trip ends in Jehanster, a village just south of Verviers. TEC bus 703 will take you from the Terminus stop to Verviers Gare Centrale in about 20 minutes. This station is on the same Eupen - Liège - Leuven - Brussels line.
A little further on in Jehanster, buses 294, 295 and 395 stop. These also go to Verviers, but they run on longer routes and have a lower frequency.

(Always check this info with the websites and apps of the public transport companies involved - SNCB, De Lijn, Le Tec, STIB, .... Timetables change regularly and also vary depending on the day and time of your travel)

The hike - June 2023

An unpaved path leads over the flank of the Schorberg hill to Eupen-Haas, where a shortcut leads us to St Joseph's Church. The elegant neo-Gothic structure dates from the mid-19th century, Here in the lower town of Eupen, near the Vesdre, the textile industry was then in full bloom.
We cross the Vesdre and follow a path past the Eupen cable factories. At a cross and an old border post, we enter the forest and reach the Escherbach, which flows a little further into the Vesdre. Until 1920, this was the border with Germany. In that year, the East Cantons were annexed to Belgium and the border posts erected in 1839 became a historical curiosity.

Walking upstream along the Escherbach, we are soon completely swallowed up by the vast Dukes Forest (Herzogenwald). For kilometres we cross the forest on wide paths without encountering anything or anyone. What is particularly striking is the silence, a silence that is reinforced by the gently babbling water in the many streams and ditches that appear everywhere out of nowhere. Sometimes those babbling sounds resemble human voices that make you think there are other people around somewhere. Once in a while a bird dares to add a few high notes to the silence palette, but otherwise hardly anything moves in the majestic forest. Along the way, a few information boards tell us that it was not always that quiet here. In pre-industrial times, iron ore was mined in numerous places and smelted in primitive blast furnaces. Countless iron slags and a few shafts still bear witness to that activity today, but we don't get to see any of it ourselves. Nature already had several human generations to cover most of their traces. A little further on, it's about World War I, when the Germans laid as much as 60 km of narrow gauge railway in these forests. They needed huge amounts of wood for their trenches and encampments. Wood was plentiful and cheap here. Via the narrow-gauge railway they carried it to Perkiets, a hamlet of Membach, where the wood was transhipped to the regular railway network.

After some 8 km, the Gileppe reservoir emerges among the trees. A bench invites us to experience the silence of the forest. Rather superfluous, as we have already been experiencing this silence for kilometres, all we had to do was walk through the forest. A viewpoint is an invitation to take a photo of the lake. A descending rocky path brings us to a wide asphalt road.
We walk across the dam, dominated by the more than 13m-high lion statue. The colossus looks towards Germany, and there is good reason for that. The textile industry depended on a continuous supply of pure water from the Vesdre. Eupen, which was still in Germany at the time, was the first to be able to use the water, and as it developed its industry, Belgian textile companies increasingly had to deal with an irregular water supply and polluted water. To solve these problems, it was decided to build the reservoir. The dam was inaugurated in 1878 by Leopold II. The lion could then be seen as the Belgian king's raised middle finger to the Germans. With the water of the Gileppe coming from the Belgian part of the High Fens, the textile barons of Verviers were again able to expand their activities unhindered.
At the same time, the demand from the population to build a water distribution network in Verviers was also addressed. Wrought iron and lead pipes were mainly used for this purpose. Because the industry bosses did not want the water to be purified, the high acidity of the peat water in particular caused the population to slowly but surely suffer from lead poisoning (saturnism) to a severe degree. Although the negative consequences of saturnism had long been known, it was not until the 1980s that the municipal authorities decided to separate the water pipes for private and industrial use, and build a purification station that came into operation in 1992.
We decide to take a break and just barely find a seat on the terrace of the tavern by the reservoir. Coincidentally, they now sell a fresh lager of the Lionne brand ... The beer went down smoothly. It is produced at the artisanal Grain d'Orge brewery in Plombières (Land of Herve). If you want a wider view of the surrounding landscape, you can visit the panorama tower, where you can also enjoy a drink and eat something. Continuing on, we discover the spacious car park behind the dam. It explains why the reservoir is always a busy place on nice days. Typical contemporary tourism: sightseeing without effort. Just get out of the car, and then trudge on, or electrically zoom along.

The GR 15 trail now follows the Borchène stream valley. Arriving at the brook we immediately bump into another dam, but this one is a miniature version if you compare it to the Gileppedam. Five years before the large dam was put into operation, water from the Borchène was already being diverted to the textile factories in Verviers. This continued until 1897 when, after an epidemic of typhoid fever, this water supply to Verviers was cut off.

We follow the Borchène upstream, and after leaving it we arrive at a spiked beech tree. The beech bears the name "Le Clawe Fawe". Hitting nails into a tree trunk was an old custom with which people thought to drive away diseases by hammering them into a tree. Especially in the province of Liège, quite a few nail trees are known. This specimen is even mentioned on an international website about monumental trees. Contrary to what one might expect, the cross near the tree has no historical significance. It is actually a joke by members of a youth movement who placed the cross here in 1985. They "borrowed" it from somewhere in a cemetery because it bore the same name of one of their leaders.

After some 12 km of walking, we finally leave the great Forest of Dukes. Suddenly we look out on the hilly hedge landscapes so typical of the Verviers and Eupen region. We pass some housing but mostly we can admire the fresh green meadows. Arable farming is hardly to be seen so the mostly grey-brown winter hues have no place in this landscape. Here it is green summer and winter, except when there is snow.

In a stretch of forest, we reach a crossroads where the nondescript Croix du Petit-Jean stands. In the local dialect it's called "Lu creüs dé pêtit Djêhan". There are quite a few similar crosses in the region south of Verviers. In the 16th century, the Principality of Liège was concerned about the increasing deforestation caused by the emerging iron industry. Large quantities of wood were needed to fire the smelting furnaces. The prince bishop therefore had areas of forest demarcated where no felling was allowed, and in the best Catholic tradition crosses were used for this purpose. Forest protection avant la lettre! Only much later was this cross named after a person, probably to commemorate his death at this place.

At the Croix du Petit-Jean, we leave the GR 15 trail which turns left. We walk straight ahead and end up in the village of Jehanster where we take the bus to Verviers train station.
As this hike is mainly through forest, it is recommended on hot days. The temperature in forests is always a lot lower than in open terrain and built-up areas.

Some images