I love the Ardennes—no, wait—Wallonia. The glory days, the decline, the revival. The endless tug-of-war with the Flemish, leaning into France but never quite falling into its embrace. It has left the region with a character all its own. To really get under its skin, you have to earn it. Read the folds of the land. Spot the beauty hidden in unassuming villages. Win over the people. Step through the doors they open for you.

In the Condroz, Wallonia leans in a little closer. This is the soft lead-in to what we like to call the ‘real’ Ardennes, the shift from farmland to low mountain country. Here the hills roll, the villages are simple, the pace reassuringly slow. The big joys hide in small things. To find them, you surrender to the rhythm of the Condroz, to its unhurried heartbeat, to a world still measured on a human scale. You learn to admire the solid grace of a square-stone farmhouse. You linger over cheese at a fromagerie. You follow a butterfly down a sandy track that meanders between the fields.

The best way to discover it? Wander without a plan. Let chance be your guide. That’s how I found myself in the gentle valley of the Samson River, in the stables of a friendly amateur farmer, and in the Devil’s Grotto of Crupet, a whimsical masterpiece built in the early 1900s by villagers themselves. All under the watch of the parish priest, who, so the story goes, kept the builders fuelled with the occasional nip of liquor.

By now, I’ve slept dozens of nights in the Condroz, on farms and campsites, in village inns, manor houses, a petite château, even a treehouse. Mornings in that treehouse were pure magic. Brewing coffee in the earliest light, claiming a seat on the deck, and letting the day come alive at its own pace. And then, just when you think it can’t possibly get any better, a bird lands an arm’s length away and starts its concert.