GR 12 Brussels to Ittre
This story was posted under the categories: Belgium, Stories, Walking the GR 12
We’ve recently discovered the pleasure of hiking along white and red signs across the country. If you ever go outside in Belgium, you’ve certainly noticed them and wondered: what is this. Well, they’re indication for walking trails and they’re are absolutely great!
We’ve done quite a few of them in the past months and there’s one that we’re trying to follow for a longer period: the GR 12. By longer period, i mean that we walk about 20-30kms of it, but always return back to our starting point and our car. So we’re not progressing all that fast 
The GR 12 actually starts off in The Netherlands at Amsterdam and goes all the way to Paris in France. It crosses a third European capital, Brussels and spans a total of 170 km within Belgium alone.
For our excursions, we started in Dworp, near Brussels, where the route leaves the city and enters the lush surroundings of our capital. It’s amazing what nice places you discover, for instance the Zevenbronnen park and Hallerbos. But the most amazing part is definitely when you take a little sidetrack of a dirtroad and enter a field. You’re walking through the grass and mud, wondering where the route will take you (by the way, great berries along the way) and then all of a sudden, you notice that you’re surrounded by cows! That’s typical for a GR, a little bit of adventure around every corner Now, i’m not very fond of any creature that is bigger than me, so we’ve actually climbed through the fence and went around them.
You’ll also go through Braine-Le-Chateau, which is this completely adorable little village that smells of medieval spirit. They still have a castle, a waterwheel and a lot of ancient houses. I guess that being there during a medieval fair also added to the experience 
At the time of writing, we’ve made it a little bit further than Ittre and have arrived at the canal Brussels-Charleroi. I’m anxious to do the rest of the route and i’m guessing that we’ll go near the famous inclining waterway of Ronquière (= Hellend Vlak van Ronquière) and then further near beautiful Ecausinnes.
You’ll find a list of GR routes in Belgium on www.groteroutepaden.be (Dutch) and on www.grsentiers.org (French). If you’re thinking bigger, check out the site of the European Ramblers’ Association which hosts and overview of all trans-european routes.
If you’re generally interested in GR routes, but don’t have the time to do one from start to end, there’s this book (in Dutch) which details roundtrips that follow the GR tracks a lot. It’s called Dagstapper (by Lannoo) and there’s one for each Belgian province.