About A pî po’l bwè

I’d like to tell you about a strange chance meeting I had in November 1982.

I had been living in Brussels for two months doing my training at the Commission to be an interpreter. One of my senior trainers, Jean Zinc, had recommended that we get some fresh air and exercise during our weekends off, in particular by going to a place called the “Ardennes”. This turned out to be difficult to locate with any great geographical accuracy until I realized it was just the expression the Belgians vaguely use to designate the hilly and forested South of the country.
I had no car and knew no one else interested in hiking so I used the then quite extensive Belgian rail network to get down there, experimenting with different destinations. Armed with a map and a rucksack containing waterproofs and a picnic I would then walk by myself from one station to another. (This wouldn’t work so well now as many of the smaller halts have sadly since been discontinued.)

So it was on a Saturday morning in early November 1982 that I alighted from the train in Vielsalm. As I walked down the platform, I couldn’t help hearing the raucous voices and laughter of a noisy young crowd who had got off the train behind me and were following me. Curiosity got the better of me, so I turned my head to see the source of the commotion. Being discreetly English, however, I didn’t want to create the impression of stopping and staring, so I just kept on walking... SMACK right into a lamp-post. Needless to say the group found this hilarious and laughed even louder. Feeling, understandably, a little humiliated I strode ahead as if nothing had happened and marched out of the station... Only to be greeted by a long haired young man in hiking boots and a rucksack, who insisted on shaking my hand and introducing himself. As I was wondering if this was a quaint Ardennais custom, the group caught up with me and it became apparent that I had just been mistaken for one of its members. The situation was explained with much amusement and the leader of the group told me that they were from Liège and about to set off on a weekend’s hiking. If I had no partciular itinerary in mind and wanted to join them, I would be more than welcome. This invitation seemed like an excellent idea and so I became a member of the jolly crew.

They would be staying overnight in a hostel type of place and asked if I would join them for the whole weekend. I can’t remember what reason I had but I needed to return to Brussels that evening, so I declined. Before parting though, Philippe, the organizer took my address and said they would let me know when the next weekend hike would take place.

I had largely forgotten about it all when a few months later a letter duly arrived through the post, this was the pre-internet era after all, inviting me to a weekend in the Petite Suisse in Luxemburg.

It was a hot spring day when we reached Echternach and some free time was granted before our departure from the bus station, come to think of it they were probably mostly having a beer at a terrace. I decided I could really do with a pair of shorts so I went to buy one. Unfortunately when I returned to the meeting place the group had already left. I knew they were heading for the Petite Suisse, so I bought a map and set off in pursuit. Luckily I soon caught up with them and the accident-prone Englishman had another exploit to his name.

This was my first full weekend so I experienced for the first time the joys of communal cooking and rough and ready accommodation that are the hall-marks of this organization. It was just like being on one of my holiday camps for teenagers: I loved it. The evening was copiously lubricated with cheap Luxemburg Rivaner white wine. I recall that over dessert there was a spirited rendition of the French creole classic “Salade de fruits, tu plais à ta mère...” with percussion from assorted kitchen utensils.

In 1984 the organizers, Philippe and Claudine, known to all as Boudi and Codie, as it is the kind of group where nicknames thrive, started to do everything under their own auspices (instead of under a student travel organization, not least because participants were no longer students) and so they needed a name.
After much consideration and rejection of such epiphets as “la godasse qui pue” (the “stinking boot”), they decided on the poetical “A pî po’l bwè” which is Walloon for “à pied par le bois” or “on foot through the woods”.

A pî po’l bwè continued to have a spring and an autumn weekend outing until 1988 by when its members had begun to get married and start families. I was a regular till about 1987. In fact when I bumped into them or rather the lamp-post, it was only their second outing which makes me one of the core. There were also related cross country skiing weekends in the winter, when you used to get more snow in the Ardennes in the 1980s.

In 2006 as members’ children were now old enough to look after themselves at weekends, the group was relaunched. Someone must have asked “Whatever happened to that mad Englishman?” as one day in 2007 quite out of the blue I got an e-mail at work from Boudi who had managed to track me down. I couldn’t make it that autumn, but our friendship was resumed in spring 2008 on a weekend near Trier in Germany.

Some participants looked the same, others had aged more and I couldn’t remember all of their names, but the old camaraderie was soon in place. People now had respectable jobs and grown up children. Inevitably in a group that size, one much loved and very funny partcipant, Bura, had died of cancer.

Arrangements are now made by e-mail and payment by electronic bank transfer. Where we used to spill boisterously out of a train onto a deserted countryside platform, we now fill the car-park in front of the “gîte” with largish cars. Still when a group of twenty or so 50 to 55 year olds who used to muck about together in their 20’s get together again, it’s very rejuvenating and things are soon as they were. Now we don’t have to carry our sleeping bag and what we need for the night with us the whole weekend, the distances are a bit shorter and the cooking is a bit more sophisticated, but it’s still the same old spirit.

A weekend with A pî po’l bwè is two hikes of about 20 km, usually in the Ardennes or neigbouring Luxemburg, though recently we have been as far afield as the Rhine valley by the Lorelei. As we stride along (they tend to go at a fair lick, though do show sympathy for my now dodgy knees) the day is spent in conversation catching up with what’s been happening in people’s lives or ruminating on the problems of the world in general and Belgium in particular. Fairly early on in the day there will be the picnic break in a rural idyll (though last time we ended up in the middle of a village medieval festival one day). This tends to make the afternoon seem very long, so if at all possible, there will be stops for a beer at the terrace of hostelries. Codie will also provide us with historic and cultural background information on some of the places we pass through (she’s a teacher) though some members of the group merely take this as an excuse to make puns and disrespectful anachronistic remarks (they were once naughty boys at the back of the classroom).
We spend the night in between the hikes in rudimentary youth-camp/scout style accommodation for groups, where snoring in the dorm may be an issue. We have dinner at a big table for about 20 with plenty of food and drink prepared together, accompanied by loud conversation, jokes, catch-phrases and singing. In the morning there’s a big breakfast and enough supplies for each participant to prepare their own picnic sandwiches to taste. Then there’s a general clean-up before leaving.

It’s all a big laugh, where things that go wrong become the subject of jokes and folklore: such as serious mis-readings of the map like when we had to sprint across a dual carriageway, dishes that don’t work out as planned like the crème brûlée without an oven, or showers that turn out to belong to the local football team...
The whole proceedings are in the broadest of Liégeois accents with some set-piece command performance stories even in Walloon dialect, such as “dèl trôye vèrète” (about the farmer who has to take his sow to be covered) beautifully told by Michel who is nicknamed “Jésus”.
It is all deeply Belgian in the best sense.

Basically these weekends are the typical stuff of a big group outing of old friends and are a real break from our very different routines. Since it’s only twice a year and people can’t make them all it remains a special event. Recently we’ve also been blessed with some spectactularly fine weather.

A pî po’l bwè is a real tonic.