Once a year, on the Tuesday before Lent, the little town of Binche in Belgian Hainaut goes completely mad. The Gilles, men dressed in costumes decorated with heraldic lions, crowns and stars, wearing wooden clogs, padded humps and, in the afternoon, enormous hats of ostrich feathers, dance through the streets to the beat of drums from dawn until late at night, throwing oranges into the crowd. The carnival of Binche is one of the oldest and most famous in Europe and is listed by UNESCO as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. If you are hit by an orange, it is considered a sign of luck, and throwing it back is not done.
The rest of the year, Binche is a quiet town with a well-preserved ring of medieval walls, one of the most complete in Belgium, and a fine town hall on the main square, topped by a belfry. This tower is part of the World Heritage site of the Belfries of Belgium and France, which honours the towers that symbolised the freedom and wealth of the medieval towns. Binche also has an international museum of carnival and masks, where you can see the costumes of the Gilles up close, along with masks from all over the world. In the sixteenth century, Mary of Hungary, governor of the Netherlands, built a lavish palace here, and its ruins can still be seen in the park.
The surrounding area is the old industrial heartland of Wallonia, with former coal mines, slag heaps and workers' housing, some of which are now World Heritage sites, such as Bois-du-Luc and Grand-Hornu. The royal domain of Mariemont, nearby, has a large park and a museum of art and archaeology. Riding here is a mix of small country roads through fields and villages and busier roads between towns, with plenty of cobbles in town centres that become slippery in the rain, and Belgian drivers who can be impatient.
Binche has fuel, shops and restaurants. Belgian food is a delight: fries with mayonnaise, steamed mussels, waffles and, of course, beer, with hundreds of local varieties. The best time to visit is during the carnival, but be warned that the town is very crowded and that parking a motorcycle can be a real challenge.