Brussels has a forest on its doorstep, and a very good one. The Sonian Forest, Forêt de Soignes or Zoniënwoud depending on who is speaking, spreads over the south-eastern edge of the city in a dark green arc of about four and a half thousand hectares, and its core is beech, tall, grey and straight as columns. The forest is shared among three regions of Belgium, and the Joseph Zwaenepoel reserve is a protected section in the Flemish part, where the managers let nature take its course and fallen trees are left to rot. It is part of the UNESCO listing for ancient and primeval beech forests, extended in 2017 to include the Sonian Forest.
Honesty matters here: this is not a primeval forest in the strict sense. People have used it for centuries as a hunting ground and wood supply, and the great beech stands you see were largely replanted from the late eighteenth century onward, when the forest was managed for timber under Austrian rule and its successors. What makes it special is that so large a mature beech wood has survived beside a European capital, and that the dead wood and old trees in the reserve host fungi, beetles, woodpeckers and bats that need exactly that.
Walking in it, especially in early summer, is like being inside a cathedral, with light falling through the new leaves in green shafts and the ground covered in bluebells in April. In autumn the colours turn to gold and copper. The forest is popular with walkers, cyclists, horse riders and joggers, so a rider on the narrow roads has to be patient and gentle. Speed limits are low, and the authorities enforce them, with cameras in the villages around.
Hoeilaart, nearby, is known for its greenhouse grapes, a local tradition for over a century, and the town of Tervuren to the north has a museum on Central Africa, a grand building that raises complex questions about Belgium's colonial past. Waterloo, only five kilometres away, is the village that gave its name to the great battle of 18 June 1815, when Napoleon was finally defeated, and the Lion's Mound, a huge artificial hill with a bronze lion on top, marks the battlefield.
Fuel is no problem here: Waterloo, Sint-Genesius-Rode and Hoeilaart are all sizeable towns with stations and restaurants. The ride goes east to Tienen, with its church of Saint Germanus, across the gentle fields of Brabant. Try a Belgian waffle or a plate of mussels and fries, and expect rain at any time of year, so keep a waterproof close.