Ideaplants

Early in the morning the tour starts: Our group called ‘Fata Morgana’ has to get into the bus and off we go. We are supposed to get dropped off 1.5 hours drive from Antwerp. From the street signs we can guess that the dropping point will be somewhere in the Ardennes…

During our bus ride we get our first stack of riddles to solve. The answers should give us the coordinates that we will need to find our way to the next meeting point. …And then the serious part of our journey starts: We reach this dropping point.

Fata Morgana: Get ready for leaving the bus.

And then everything goes fast: The bus stops, we get off and the bus drives off. The team gets the compasses & directions ready and after some first discussions about the initial direction, we walk off into the forest.

Everything seems easy in the beginning. The ways seem to be clearly explained and sometimes we doubt just because a direction seems to be too logical… After the first couple of hours we safely arrive at the first soup-tent. In the middle of a field the volunteers have set up a shelter where we get hot soup and selfmade bread. Except for the muddy floor we get the impression of being in a real restaurant – they even had candle holders . After a good lunch we are off to the second part of our journey.

Still everything seems to go smoothly. My team mates are experienced and did already several droppings before. Soon we only have 3 papers left until we will reach the next soup-tent… we have to climb a couple of fences and even find a tree house… but suddenly we get some doubts about the direction… which fence were we supposed to climb? What part of the field should we cross? Except for a couple of irritated cows, no other dropping group seems around and also the directions seem not to be right anymore… Somehow we got lost. HOW COULD THAT HAPPEN?

We walk a bit back – it is a bit difficult to estimate the shape of this big field we see next to us and things start getting a bit confusing… Especially when it starts getting dark. At some point it is clear – there’s no other way: we have to open the emergency envelope and call one of the guards.

While Steven explains our situation and where exactly we got lost to the guide (see video – it is in Dutch but I’m sure you get the picture), we find a second group that got lost at the same point.

Together we follow the guide’s instructions and 20 minutes later we meet one of the volunteers that guides us to the food tent. “The last two groups arrived!”. Yep – we had been lost for about 2 hours and everyone else had already passed us…

After some nice & warm soup we take our last energy for the last 3.5 kilometers. In the dark things don’t go as smoothly but luckily the instructions are more clear now as well… and finally we arrive at the final location.

Fata Morgana has arrived!

a lout applause and dinner welcomes us at the final point. We made it! Everyone is happy and tired… and soon we are in the bus back home.

What a day! 20km walking, 10 hours in the forest, rain, cold, mountains – somehow the whole thing was lots of fun. The little bit different way of spending your weekend I can only recommend it.

For more information about this dropping have a look at this website (in Dutch).