Hugh Pope

In 2025, on a whim, I set out from home on foot to create a nature-filled, long-distance trail to and through the Belgian Ardennes – with no need for cars, overnight stays or heavy backpacks. Now leading Antwerp publishers Luster are turning my 20 one-day stages from Brussels to Luxembourg into a book.

We’ve signed the contract, started work on the design and the pocket-sized volume will be out worldwide in English and Dutch in April 2027. Called The Brux-to-Lux Trail, it will come complete with my photos, maps, GPS links, and practical notes about each day’s stage of the 385-kilometre journey.

Best of all, Luster’s founder and publisher Marc Verhagen wants the 250 pages to include full, thematic accounts of what struck me most on each walking day through this quintessential slice of Europe. Those include stumbling into the bloodiest day that the French military has ever suffered, remembering the Anglo-Belgian moments in my own family’s history, encountering the mediaeval village trauma of witch-hunting, or simply enjoying the beauty of days walking through fields, woods and villages.

The book will thus offer a new, sharper, updated, and easier-to-use version of pieces first published here on Substack. My introductory piece gives an overview here, including a video with pictures.

I love it that multiple versions of The Brux-to-Lux Trail happily live on side by side, and that people are already trying parts of it out. Aside from an outing in the Brussels Times, other versions of the journey are available as a Komoot collection and on the lovely new walking adventures site Simbonation. This week, I also walked the first stage of the route with podcaster Andrew Stuck of walk-listen-create (Andrew plans to publish his interview with me next March, before the publication of the book).

The route – which I walked in 20 mostly separate day stages over 15 months – proved remarkably green and pleasant for a highly developed country. I’ve now totted up all the numbers. Three quarters of the 385 km trail is on paths, and nearly two thirds of them are unpaved. The tracks wind under towering beech trees, past dreaming castles, through battlefields like Waterloo, along the valleys of Belgium’s river country, and through the rolling forests of the Ardennes.

Each successive day’s walk is designed to be reached easily by public transport to and from Brussels, meaning that the walks can be done easily when the weather is good and without lugging overnight stuff. In the book, I’ll be showing where accommodation nearby means that stages can be easily grouped together for a weekend or few days’ walking.

I spent a heady day in the handsome city of Antwerp this month deciding these and other details with Luster’s designers round a table in their fine 1930s building. I’m sure the book is in good hands. For instance, Luster puts out the “Hidden Secrets” series of handbooks that have introduced great numbers of people to cities all over the world.

There’s still plenty of work to do, including the design of the cover, the translation into Dutch, and all those important details for any kind of guide book. I’ll do my best to ensure that everyone has a smooth experience, if and when they choose to follow in my footsteps along The Brux-to-Lux Trail.

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