The best running trails around Aalter

The Bruwaanbos is a quiet and dense deciduous forest, where winding paths lead you through a varied landscape of old trees and small clearings. The forest offers a mix of shady areas and light vistas, ideal for a relaxing walk or bike ride.

The Hooggoed is a forest area of 120 hectares located near the Bulskampveld in Aalter. The domain forest is managed by the Agency for Nature and Forests and consists of beech, pedunculate oak, birch, Scots pine and larch. The Hooggoed is located on a sandy bottom and is therefore also called the Egypt field. Historically, however, the name Hooggoed refers to two separate areas north and south of the current forest. During the 18th century, they were both owned by a different Jesuit monastery. The fathers intensively forested the Aalter heath: first with deciduous wood, then with coniferous wood. The Hooggoedbos is divided into rabatten or canals (elongated or round mounds surrounded by ditches). The Hooggoed is home to red squirrels, weasels, black woodpeckers, buzzards, sparrowhawks, kestrels, long-eared owls, nuthatches and tree creepers, among others. Het Hooggoed is freely accessible on the avenues and paths that cross the area.

It is a three-bay brick hall church with a three-sided choir and a built-in west tower on a square floor plan. The tower still has its original 17th-century appearance. The church looks mainly neo-Gothic. The church furniture was completely renewed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Within the partially walled grounds of the church, on the street side, stands the Chapel of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows with a crypt, built around 1854 by Count Leopold 1st Sergeant d’Hendecourt, designed by architect de Limbourg. A staircase with an iron railing between bluestone pinnacles leads to the chapel, a brick neo-Gothic chapel with a bluestone west gable and a three-sided chancel under a slate roof. The pointed arch doorway features archivolts. The gable is embellished with crockets. The painted brick side walls are punctuated by buttresses of cut bluestone and a pointed arch window with iron glazing bars. The white-plastered interior is covered with a pointed arch. A tombstone lies in front of the neo-Gothic bluestone altar. White-painted bas-reliefs hang on the walls.

Strikingly beautiful pump that you can find on the square in front of the church.

The Hooggoed most likely owes its name to the relatively high location of the area. In 1687 it was mentioned as a homestead built on tax land. The Hooggoedbos is part of the Bulskampveld Landscape Park, which extends across Aalter, Beernem, Oostkamp and Wingene, among others. Source: https://www.aalter.be/hooggoedbos

The oldest part of the church dates from the 16th century. The church was built on the site of the Bethlehem parish in the 13th century. For a long time the church consisted of only a central aisle and a north aisle. At some point a chapel nave was added on the south side. The church was destroyed at the end of the 15th century during the religious disputes and was rebuilt in the second half of the 17th century. In 1847 the church was enlarged on the south side with a third aisle. A bay was added on the west side so that the tower was built into the church. A new west facade was also created. From 1870 to 1874 the church was enlarged on the choir side. In 1879, the appearance of the church was changed in a neo-Gothic sense.

Since the end of December 2001, the two-and-a-half-meter-high cast-iron water pump has once again graced the village center of Bellem. After the exceptionally dry summer of 1858, Mrs. Jeanne De Naeyer-Van Caeneghem proposed donating a water pump to the people of Bellem. The council of the time naturally agreed. Thanks to the village pump, the people of Bellem received clean, uncontaminated water. Around 1900, the pump was removed from the village square and found a new location in the Mariahove estate. The municipal council decided to restore the pump and move it back to its original location, near the lime trees near the church.