Rocher du Bieley is a stunning viewpoint in the High Fens in the East of Belgium. The hike described here will take you there while enjoying some other beautiful Belgian landscapes.
Description
Distance: The total distance for this hike is 17 kilometers (loop hike)
Elevation gain: The total incline was 300 meters
Moving time: According to Strava my moving time was 3 hours and 58 minutes.
Difficulty: I would rate this as an easy hike.
Address start: Parking Hohes Venn Railbike – Am Breitenbach, 4750 Leykaul, België – Belgium
Price: Free
Use the pinned location below so you can navigate straight to where the hike starts.
How to get to the trailhead?
To get to the starting point of this hike it is absolutely recommended to use your own transportation. From Brussels to Hohes Venn Railbike it’s about 2 hours driving.
A quick Google search teaches me that you need almost 4 hours to get there with public transportation. Not recommended in my opinion.
If you’re already staying in the area of Bütgenbach this could be a great afternoon activity!
How to hike to Rocher Du Bieley Viewpoint?
Generally speaking for all hikes, the easiest way is to download a GPX file that you can view on a gps device, a smartphone or smartwatch. It will tell you step-by-step how to walk. It also includes an elevation profile of the hike which can help you to decide if this hike is for you or not. All the hikes on this blog are being tracked on Strava (sports tracking smartphone application) and Wikiloc (community based hiking smartphone application).
Download the GPX file right here: rocher-du-bieley.gpx
This hike passes through military domain so make sure to check the table of planned target practices to see if it’s allowed.
HOW IS HIKING to the rocher du Bieley Viewpoint ?
This hike starts right at the tourist attraction called Hohes Venn Railbike. If you’re staying in the region this might be a fun activity to do with the family. We just parked our car there and took off on the hike to the Rocher du Bieley viewpoint.
It was a rainy day but because of all the photos I saw the expectations were quite high. The hike started out mostly on asphalted roads which is usually what I like to avoid as much as possible. It seamed that we were passing along some cool trails but none of those we had to follow while navigating this route as mentioned on the official website of Butgenbach. After a while this changed for the better.
We finally started hitting more offroad trails which made it a lot more interesting. We hiked through some typical High Fens landscapes. Green and because of the heavy rainfall prior to this hike a bit swampy sometimes. That obviously didn’t stop us from making our way to one of the Instagrammed viewpoints in Belgium.
During this hike you will walk almost all the time along the Belgium/German border. Because of Schengen this not an issue, so no border controls or anything.
In general this is a great hike if you don’t mind walking a lot on asphalted or gravel roads. As for elevation gain this route is also quite easy.
Rocher du Bieley Viewpoint
For a while already I wanted to do the hike to the Rocher du Bieley. My expectations were quite high because of all the Instagrammers and influencers that posted their photos from on top of this viewpoint.
In all honesty the road that we took, which is the offical road as mentioned on the website of Butgenbach, wasn’t the most scenic in Belgium. The viewpoint however was quite impressive.
Conclusion
If you’re up for a not too challenging hike but with a great viewpoint as a reward this route could be great! I think that it would definitely be possible to follow this route when there’s snow as well. I might have to try that in the winter time!
For me personally, I would prefer some wilder off-road trails. Maybe I’ll create a custom route in the future.
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