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FrançaisLiège province packs a lookout tower, a witches’ rock, Europe’s longest underground boat ride, Belgium’s highest point and a 200-year-old crystal works into a three-day loop, and you need a car for all of it. Day 1 is two hikes in the Ardennes around Trois-Ponts and Lierneux, day 2 runs Remouchamps caves to the High Fens by way of a cemetery walk in Verviers, and day 3 is Val Saint-Lambert and the Préhistomuseum on the way back towards Liège.
I am Belgian and I still needed pushing to see more of my own country. The push came from the Province of Liège, which had put together a list of unusual places to visit, eat and sleep and asked whether I wanted to try some of them. I built my own route from it, mixing outdoor, cultural and culinary things to do in Liège, and what follows is the trip I actually did, with the prices and opening arrangements rechecked since.
Day 1: Trois-Ponts, Lierneux and two Ardennes walks
Day 1 is two walks and two good meals, and it never takes you more than 20 minutes from Trois-Ponts. The morning is the Leroux Tower above the Salm valley; the afternoon is a rock in a pine forest that local legend gives to witches.
Hiking to the Leroux Tower
The Leroux Tower is a wooden lookout above Trois-Ponts, reached by a 6 km (3.7 mile) circular walk that starts at the town’s own railway station, where parking is free. From the top you look over the Salm valley, the upper lakes of the Coo-Trois-Ponts pumped-storage plant, the village of Coo, the hamlets of Brume, Mont-de-Fosse, Bergeval and Saint-Jacques, and on a clear day the Baraque de Fraiture over in Luxembourg province.
This map shows the circuit, though I walked it the other way round, which is how the directions below run.
The route is signed but not always obvious. Facing the station, walk right towards the bridge over the railway, about 200 m. The trail starts to the right of where the bridge begins and drops down towards the river Salm; there is a marker pole, and the sign to follow is the horizontal red rectangle. Further on, the path reaches a point where it continues straight ahead and a metal bridge goes off to the right. The signage here is poor: keep straight. What follows is the only narrow stretch, wide enough for one person, with a drop beside you as the path rises and falls along the river.
Two landmarks tell you that you are still right. You pass a large campsite on your right, then walk under a railway bridge. When you reach a main road there are marker poles again, and you turn left to go up the hill.
The climb is the part people warn about, and it is manageable. The path widens and stays half-surfaced, but it goes uphill continuously to the plateau, roughly 180 m of ascent across the walk. Plenty of write-ups call it heavy going; it is nothing like hiking in the Austrian mountains. If you are moderately fit you will be fine; go slowly and stop when you need to. At the top you cross a patch of forest, turn left, and the tower is a minute or two away.
The tower has a wartime story. The current structure was built in 2000; the first one dated from 1938 and was named after the woodworker who supplied its timber. On 21 July 1944, with the area still under German occupation, Belgian resistance fighters planted a Belgian flag on top of it, and it became a local symbol of hope. A third tower stood between the two and was taken down in the late 1990s because the wood had rotted.
Climbing it is only mildly alarming if you dislike heights. The steps to the first two levels are open-tread, so you can see straight down between them, which was the part I found unpleasant. There is a bench on the top deck and a picnic table at the bottom.
The way back is an easy forest trail, still uneven underfoot. Keep following the red rectangles even where instinct says otherwise: at one point a path drops left towards the town and looks like the obvious line, and the waymarks take you left and down a little further on instead. The forest trail ends at a main road, which you follow downhill to the left for about 8 minutes to reach the station.
Wear boots. The trail was muddy in places and uneven throughout, and trainers only do if it has been dry for a while. I walk in Salomon Quest 4D GTX boots, which have handled far worse.
Hunting season closes this walk. Between October and December, dates when shooting is taking place are posted at the marker poles by the main road, and the hike is forbidden on those days. If you are going in autumn, ring the tourist office on +32 (0)80 68 40 45 first.
If you are short of time and only want the view, you can park along the Route de Wanne and walk into the forest to reach the tower in a few minutes.
Lunch at Hostellerie Beau Site, Trois-Ponts
Hostellerie Beau Site is a hotel with a restaurant and a terrace looking over the valley at Trois-Ponts, and non-residents can eat there if they book ahead. I had a three-course lunch: a goat’s cheese, apple and pear salad, a game main course and a cake with ice cream. The man running the place was good company as well. It is at Rue des Villas 45, Trois-Ponts.
The Pierre Noufy walk from Les Villettes
The Pierre Noufy, or Noufy Rock, is one of the most isolated standing rocks in Belgium and it does not sit on a marked trail. Local legend says a gold ring grows inside the stone, that touching it brings fertility, and that witches once held covens there. Earlier walkers have cleared a short path to it from a trail that starts in Les Villettes, part of Lierneux.
Parking is improvised. Les Villettes has no car park, and I left the car on the grass by a picnic table on the street called La Sevraille, which is also where the walk begins. La Sevraille climbs steeply out of the village, and after that the route is essentially flat until it drops back down.
The walk I did is 5.5 km (3.4 miles) and follows the upright blue rectangle. There is also a 14 km (8.7 mile) route past the Pierre Noufy marked with the horizontal yellow rectangle if you have longer.
I expected a rock in a bare November wood and got something else. The forest here is pine, the ground is thick bright green moss and the bracken had turned orange. I could not photograph it in a way that did it justice.
The navigation is simple. Where La Sevraille meets the forest, keep straight along the wide forest road until a large crossroads where the signs send you left, then keep following the road as it narrows into the trees. The turn-off for the rock is at a crossroads where your path continues straight and a trail goes right; you leave the route for a few metres, and a second sign points to the Pierre Noufy. It is easy to think you have missed it before you have gone far enough.
The rock itself did something I was not expecting. Smaller stones around it were covered in moss and mushrooms, the wood was completely silent, and I was alone. I meant to walk all the way round it and stopped halfway, because it did not feel like a place to keep going. Make of that what you like.
The trail back down to Les Villettes gives you the view of the walk, out over the valley.
Dinner at La Maison de Maître, and where to sleep on day 1
La Maison de Maître is a small country hotel with its own restaurant at Les Marottes 37-39, Arbrefontaine, in the municipality of Lierneux, and it is where I ate on the first night. The website offers à la carte with four choices per course; when I went it was a fixed menu, probably because of the season. I had shrimp in a creamy dill sauce, pork with vegetables and a fried potato mash, and three scoops of caramel mousse. The starter and the dessert were excellent, the main less to my taste, which is a preference rather than a criticism of the cooking. The woman serving was attentive throughout, and there is a large car park behind the hotel.
Check before you drive out, because its opening has changed. The hotel reopened on 8 July 2026 and now takes guests and diners on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, and it closes for a stretch from late November. Booking is required for dinner if you are not staying. Book a room at La Maison de Maître if the day of the week works, because it puts you within 20 minutes of both walks.
Day 2: Remouchamps caves, Verviers and the High Fens
Day 2 runs north-east from the Ardennes to the German-speaking corner of Belgium, and its three stops are a cave, a cemetery and the highest point in the country. It ends in Eupen.
The Caves of Remouchamps
The Caves of Remouchamps have been shown to visitors since 1828, and the tour ends with the longest underground boat trip in Europe. Visits are guided only and run through the day, with frequency depending on how busy it is, and the whole thing takes about 1 hour 15 minutes.
The walking half comes first: about 1,200 m through halls and galleries carved by the Rubicon, the small river that still runs about a metre deep through the cave and looks incapable of the work it did. One chamber is the exception. The Cathedral was not cut by water but formed when part of the cave collapsed roughly 700 years ago.
The guides fill the walk with the things you would not notice. The bats. A 7 m column of flowstone about 700,000 years old, growing at a rate of a few cubic centimetres a century, fed by rainwater seeping through cracks in the roof. Wet and whitish means still growing; dry and brown means dead, which happens when the crack above closes, and a dead formation can come back to life if a new crack opens.
Then you get in a boat. The return leg is about 700 m of underground navigation, poled by the guides with a wooden pole, in boats that take up to 22 people. At the end you pass through the only man-made part of the route, a 40 cm crack widened with explosives so the boats could get through. It used to be called the kissing tunnel, because until a few years ago it was completely dark and the guides could hear couples but not see them.
I went in the last week of a season and had the guide, Milton, to myself: a Surinamese rastaman in uniform with a heavy gold chain, entirely happy to be photographed.
The 5 things to know before you go are listed below.
- Prices in 2026 are €20 (about $23, £17) for adults, €17 for 12 to 17-year-olds, €16 for over-60s and €14 for children aged 3 to 11.
- It is open all year, from 9.30am to 5pm or 6pm depending on the season, with an annual closure from 6 to 31 January. Book online or by phone.
- Heavy rain stops the boats. When it rains hard the lower level floods and a 30 m waterfall comes down onto it, and the boat leg cannot run.
- There are about 400 steps and some narrow passages, with a shorter route available for visitors with limited mobility.
- The cave holds a steady 12°C (54°F) whatever the weather outside, and dogs are not admitted except assistance dogs.
To make a day of it, the Monde Sauvage Safari Parc at Aywaille is next door: 85 hectares (210 acres) of parkland with over a thousand animals.
Lunch in Verviers, and the cemetery walk
Van der Valk Verviers is the easy lunch stop, because it occupies a converted 19th-century railway station with a big car park in front of it and a bistro alongside the restaurant. I had a traditional Liège meatball with fries, a small salad and apple sauce. If you do not know what a boulet à la liégeoise is, our guide to typical Belgian foods explains it.
I ate in Verviers for the next stop, which takes some explaining: a walk round the municipal cemetery. People queue for Père-Lachaise in Paris, and this is the same idea at a smaller scale. The cemetery of Verviers covers 9 hectares (22 acres) of hillside park, and the Parcours du Cimetière is a marked route of about 3 km (1.9 miles) past more than 40 graves and funerary monuments, with a brochure that tells you who is buried in each and what they did. Along the way there is a mausoleum with 56 chambers, the crypt of a major industrial family and the graves of well-known artists. The brochure was written by Daniel Roussel, a historian of cemeteries, and the local tourist office sells it.
Book a room at Van der Valk Verviers if you would rather split the province into two bases; it has a pool and a renovated spa, and Spa-Francorchamps is 10 minutes away.
Signal de Botrange, the highest point in Belgium
The Signal de Botrange is the highest point in Belgium at 694 m (2,277 ft), and it is a 20-minute drive from Verviers. It is not a mountain. It is the top of a broad plateau in the High Fens, and the stone staircase built beside it exists specifically to add 6 m and let you stand at 700 m, which is the most Belgian solution to a problem imaginable. Go anyway.
The High Fens around it is a nature reserve and good walking all year. In dry summers some sectors close because of fire risk, so check before you plan a route.
Google Maps sends you the wrong way. Coming from Verviers, just after Baraque Michel the road splits and Google Maps tells you to continue straight on the Route de la Baraque Michel. The signs for the Signal de Botrange point left, onto the N676. Go left and the restaurant and information centre appear almost immediately on your right, with a large free car park and the steps visible from it. To walk, cross the road at the information point and take the path in front of it, which joins several trails.
Sleeping and eating in Eupen: Sleepwood and Fine Food
Sleepwood is a 3-star eco-hotel at Neustraße 61 in the centre of Eupen, built almost entirely from solid wood and clay, and it is the most interesting room I slept in on this trip. Storage is built into the walls rather than into furniture, wooden planks hang on ropes to make a table, and the mirror over the sink slides on rails so it works as a full-length one. A small screen by the bed controls the lights and the temperature, which is capped at 23°C. The heating runs through the walls rather than through radiators, it switches off by itself when you open a window, and each room has its own air circulation, drawing air out through the bathroom and blowing fresh air in through a three-speed unit you can turn off if you get cold.
The details go further than they need to. Rooms are designed to keep radiation low, and the wifi router and range extender are plugged in rather than fixed, so you can unplug them. There is a flat-screen television but no minibar, and no kettle in the room; ask downstairs and they will send tea up, which arrived as a small pot with a plate of chocolates. You can take a refillable glass bottle of still or sparkling water up with you. The bed was the strongest thing about the room. Parking Loten is a free car park less than five minutes’ walk away.
Fine Food is the hotel’s restaurant and serves four courses: a tapas buffet, a light starter, a main and a dessert buffet with sweets and cheese, with two choices at starter and three at main. I had three tapas, then smoked salmon with avocado salad, then a white fish with vegetables and purple potato, and three small sweets instead of the cheese. The name is accurate: everything was precise and correctly portioned. The kitchen serves from 6pm to 8.30pm, Monday to Saturday. Book a room at Sleepwood if the wooden rooms appeal, and book the restaurant at the same time.
Day 3: Val Saint-Lambert and the Préhistomuseum
Day 3 runs back west towards Liège and pairs two very different museums, one about crystal and one about the Stone Age, with the most memorable meal of the trip in between.
Val Saint-Lambert in its bicentenary year
Val Saint-Lambert is the crystal works at Seraing, housed in the buildings of a former Cistercian abbey, and 2026 is its 200th year. That changes what you can actually see, so check before you drive out.
The permanent museum, Cristal Discovery, has been showing as temporarily closed to individual visitors, with group bookings of 15 or more taken all year except Mondays at €12 for adults, €10 for seniors and €8 for children, by reservation only. What it holds is worth knowing about for when it returns: a gallery of 250 crystal pieces tracing the factory’s artistic development, a film of testimony from former workers, five interactive glass sculptures by the Belgian artist Bernard Tirtiaux and the Scenery Show, a walk-through history of glassmaking. My favourite parts of that show were the opening, which gives you the impression of floating over the site in a hot-air balloon as it changes through the centuries, and the room on the everyday roles glass plays.
For 2026 the bicentenary programme has reopened the site to individual visitors instead, and the two things to book are set out below.
- Exposition Cristal Vivant, 11 April to 6 December 2026: two centuries of the crystal works in one route through the abbey, mixing historic pieces with contemporary collaborations, and reopening the immersive route for the occasion. Free glass-blowing demonstrations are included, Wednesday to Sunday. Adults over 25 pay €15 (about $17, £13), 6 to 25-year-olds and students €10, over-65s €13, a family of two adults and two children €40, and under-6s go free.
- Expérience immersive Cristal Vivant, 11 April to 21 June 2026: a 360-degree sound, light and video-mapping piece inside the abbey by Dirty Monitor, under the artistic direction of Luc Petit. Adults pay €17 (about $20, £15), 6 to 25-year-olds €12, over-65s €14 and a family €57. It can be booked on its own or combined with the exhibition.
Both run Wednesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm outside Belgian school holidays and daily during them, with last entry at 5pm. There is a shop, a café and grounds you can walk to see the historic buildings from outside.
Lunch at the Archéobistrot, Flémalle
The Archéobistrot at the Préhistomuseum in Flémalle serves a tasting menu that walks you through the ages of man, and it is less than 10 minutes’ drive from Val Saint-Lambert. It also does ordinary bistro dishes, and you can eat there without visiting the museum, though you would be missing the better half of the day.
The tasting menu I had ran through 5 courses, listed below.
- From prehistory: a half-raw fish skewer cured with salt.
- From antiquity: pan-fried old vegetables with mushrooms and feta.
- From the Middle Ages: salmon soup.
- From the modern age: a hare sandwich.
- From now: slow-simmered oxtail.
A quinoa salad comes with it, and you can add a dessert built on an 1891 recipe, a pastry with nut cream. I did.
The Préhistomuseum
The Préhistomuseum at Rue de la Grotte 128, Flémalle, is not the museum I expected, and I say that as someone who does not like history museums. I went for the bistro and stayed for the rest.
It is a 30-hectare (74-acre) domain rather than a building: an exhibition hall, an archery course, a maze, reconstructions, a barefoot path, a cave and a farm stocked with the first domesticated animals and plants. The permanent exhibition is built around doing rather than looking. Rooms carry small squares you scan with a tablet for more detail, and there are things to try, including scraping the fur from an animal skin and shaping an arrowhead. One wall sets everyday objects we use now, jeans and trainers among them, beside their equivalents from other periods. Another hall explains the different kinds of archaeologist and how finds are stored and conserved, and you can book a meeting with one.
The 3 practical tips for a visit are listed below.
- Go to the exhibition building first, because that is where you find out which activities run at what time.
- Some activities need booking on arrival.
- Parking is free at the museum.
It opens daily from 10am to 6pm, and adult tickets start at around €9 (about $10, £8), with reductions for over-65s, students and children aged 3 to 12 and free entry under 3.
Getting around Liège province
You need a car for this itinerary. Buses exist, but the Leroux Tower trailhead, the Pierre Noufy walk, the Signal de Botrange and the Préhistomuseum are all awkward or impossible without one, and the walks are the reason to come. Traffic here is light, and free parking is easy to find outside the towns.
Compare rent a car rates for a Liège or Brussels pick-up once your dates are fixed. Liège Airport is 25 minutes from most of day 3 and about an hour from the Ardennes end of the route.
Tours and tickets in Liège province
Guided options here cluster around Liège city, the Spa-Francorchamps circuit and the Ardennes valleys rather than around the sites on this itinerary, which are mostly self-guided. The widget below shows what is currently bookable.
Liège province FAQ
Do you need a car for Liège province?
You need a car for this route, because four of its stops sit at trailheads and plateau car parks that buses do not usefully reach. Liège city itself, Verviers and Eupen are all served by train, so a car-free trip built on those three works. The Ardennes half of the province does not.
What is the highest point in Belgium?
The Signal de Botrange is the highest point in Belgium at 694 m (2,277 ft), on a plateau in the High Fens near Eupen. A stone staircase beside it adds 6 m so that visitors can stand at exactly 700 m. There is a free car park, a restaurant and an information centre at the site, and walking trails start across the road.
How long is the boat ride in the Caves of Remouchamps?
The underground boat ride at Remouchamps runs about 700 m and is the longest of its kind in Europe. It forms the return leg of a guided visit lasting around 1 hour 15 minutes, after roughly 1,200 m on foot. Guides pole the boats, which carry up to 22 people, and heavy rain can flood the level and cancel the boat leg.
When is Val Saint-Lambert open to individual visitors?
Val Saint-Lambert’s bicentenary programme runs from 11 April to 6 December 2026 and is the way individual visitors get in this year. The permanent Cristal Discovery museum has been showing as temporarily closed to individuals and open to groups of 15 or more by prior booking. Check the bicentenary site before you travel, because the programme has several strands with different dates.
Is the Pierre Noufy hard to find?
The Pierre Noufy is off the marked trail but easy enough to reach on a cleared path. Follow the upright blue rectangle on the 5.5 km (3.4 mile) route from Les Villettes; the turn-off is at a crossroads where your path continues straight and a trail goes right, with a second sign a few metres along it pointing at the rock. The common mistake is turning back before you have gone far enough.
WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips
The 5 tips below come from doing this route and from re-checking the prices and opening arrangements since, and each one is something you cannot see from the road.
- Do not trust Google Maps at Baraque Michel. Coming from Verviers to the Signal de Botrange, the road splits and Maps says continue straight on the Route de la Baraque Michel. The signposts point left, onto the N676, and left is correct. Go straight and you lose 20 minutes.
- Ring the Trois-Ponts tourist office before an autumn walk to the Leroux Tower. Between October and December the hike is forbidden on shooting days, and the dates are only posted on the marker poles partway round. The number is +32 (0)80 68 40 45.
- Check which parts of Val Saint-Lambert are open before you drive to Seraing. The permanent Cristal Discovery museum has been closed to individual visitors and open to groups of 15 or more by reservation; the 2026 bicentenary exhibition, 11 April to 6 December, is what individuals can book, Wednesday to Sunday, last entry 5pm.
- Book La Maison de Maître around its days, not its menu. It reopened on 8 July 2026 and now serves on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings only, with a closure from late November. Non-residents must reserve to eat.
- The Remouchamps caves close for most of January, not for the winter. The annual closure runs 6 to 31 January and the caves are open the rest of the year, 9.30am to 5pm or 6pm by season, at €20 for adults. Wear a layer: it is 12°C (54°F) inside whatever the forecast says.
About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, who is Belgian, and the first-person notes in this post come from the three days she spent driving this route through the Province of Liège. That trip was made at the invitation of the Province of Liège; the itinerary and the opinions are her own. The team covers Belgium for independent travellers, including the walks, caves, museums, restaurants and hotels worth booking in Wallonia, and re-checks the prices and opening arrangements on this page before each update.
