(our country house in Flanders’ Fields: Lo, Ooststraat 21)

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” (Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”)

In 1845, when he was 27 Henry David Thoreau decided to turn his back to ‘over-civilisation’ and all its superfluous luxuries and, immersing himself in nature, went and lived in Walden Pond, “to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”.

In Walden Pond he wrote ‘Walden’, one of the classics of world literature.

We dedicate our ‘Walden’, located in Flander’s Fields, the countryside praised by Jacques Brel in ‘Le Plat Pays’, to Thoreaus honour.

Our ‘Walden’ too, is a place where one can reflect, meditate, meanwhile enjoying the delights of a magnificent old garden with a variety of plants and (fruit) trees. The house is a former, late 19th century doctor’s mansion, and has kept its old atmosphere, meanwhile offering every modern convenience.

The area is especially wellknown for biking: biking tours connect the villages strewn across the rural landscape: one can bike from church tower to church tower, as well as along the picturesque, winding river the ‘Yser’, all the while having a moment of reflection and awareness at one of the many war cemeteries, reminding us of the atrocities of (the 1st World) war.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” (Henry David Thoreau, ‘Walden’)