Taking a team into the High Fens: what is allowed and what is not

A reserve, not a park

The High Fens are the largest nature reserve in Belgium: over four thousand hectares of peat bog, heath and woodland, managed by the Nature and Forestry Department with scientific support from the Centre for Research on Nature, Forests and Timber. Wardens run the surveillance, backed by a team of volunteer auxiliary supervisors.

That status changes everything for a group. A reserve is not a park: you do not run an activity there, you are received there. The question every company asks before booking therefore deserves a precise answer, because a promise made to thirty people is settled on the day itself if it turns out to be wrong.

Three zones, three regimes

The reserve is divided into zones, and each one follows its own rules.

• Zone B is open to walk freely, but only on the waymarked paths, without stepping off them. Dogs are banned even on a lead, as are cycling, horse riding, cross-country skiing and picking plants, berries or mushrooms.
• Zone C opens only in the company of an accredited nature guide. The restrictions of zone B apply in full, and access is generally closed from mid-March to mid-July to protect nesting birds.
• Zone D is strictly off limits, with no exception and no accompaniment.

In practice, you walk in zone B, or you enter zone C accompanied. Send us your route before you fix it: if any part of it touches zone C, we arrange an accredited nature guide on request. That is the only honest way to bring your team up there.

What happens nowhere in the reserve

Four prohibitions apply everywhere, including in the woods bordering the reserve: fire, smoking, camping and motorbikes. Waste goes back out with you.

Those rules rule out most team building formats in one go. No fire, so no brazier. No workshop, no laid table, no sawn log, no course you could have marked out. If you are looking for ground to set something up on, it is not up there, it is down here. The reserve stays what it was made for: somewhere you walk and look.

That is what makes your day interesting to build. The Ardennais Challenge, with its map, its compass and its workshops, runs on our ground. The walk runs up there. Do both on the same day and your team comes home with two images instead of one.

The reserve closes, and rarely when you expect it

In dry spells a red flag goes up and access to the boardwalks is barred, to stop fire taking hold in the peat. The instinct is to place that risk in high summer. It falls mostly between March and May, when the heath is still short and dry after winter.

Two things limit the damage. The Fagne de la Polleur and the surrounding forest tracks are not covered by these closures, and the state of play on the day is checked by phone on +32 (0)80 44 72 73 before sending a group up.

For a company the consequence is straightforward: an outing into the Fens is always planned with an alternative. Ours sits at the estate, which keeps a red flag from turning into a lost day.

Forty minutes, and what follows from it

From the Domaine de Bronromme in Theux, allow forty minutes by road to the Signal de Botrange and the same to the Baraque Michel, some thirty kilometres on slow roads. The first edge of the fens, near Hockai, is twenty-eight minutes away. Spa is sixteen.

These figures decide the programme. An outing into the Fens fills half a day: forty minutes out, as many back, and two to three hours on site for the walk to justify the drive. On a two-day seminar it naturally takes the second morning, when the group is rested and the light is low.

The rest happens on site. The estate takes up to thirty-eight participants across its eighteen bedrooms, and its working spaces run from one hundred to three hundred and fifty square metres.

Three questions about the Fens with a group

Can a team building activity take place in the High Fens?

No. The reserve bans fire, camping, picking and leaving the paths, and cycling and horse riding are not permitted either. What remains possible, and worth the drive, is the walk, accompanied by an accredited nature guide as soon as the route enters zone C. The activities themselves take place at the estate.

Do you need a guide to enter the High Fens?

Not in zone B, whose waymarked paths are open to all. In zone C, yes: access there is only possible with an accredited nature guide, and it is closed from mid-March to mid-July in any case. We arrange one on request.

Which season works best?

Autumn, for the light and for the deer rut. Winter lives up to its reputation, with clear horizons and boardwalks caught in the frost. Spring is the least reliable: it is between March and May that closures for fire risk fall most often.

Building the day together

Give us your dates, your numbers and the time you have. We will tell you what fits into the day, what calls for a guide, and what is better kept at the estate.

Details of the venue are on the Domaine de Bronromme page, and our outdoor formats on the team building page. If you are building a stay around the reserve, we have set out the driving times and the shape of the two days. For a two-day stay, the seminar page presents both estates, and we have written elsewhere about what a night on site changes.

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