One Sunday a month from March to November, take part in our guided walks "Gourmet Nature"
Gourmet?
A lot of plants that freely grow along the paths, on the banks, in our meadows and our woods are often considered as " bad herbs " and therefore taken in worth considerating, or even destroyed. But they can be used in our food and are often delicious, able to satisfy our gourmet senses.
Some of these plants, very known of our forebears and widely used, have completely disappeared of our food assortment.
Loss of flavors, loss of experience to which you can easily remedy, while combining the pleasure of the explanations of an extremely competent guide and a quiet walk, suitable for the children as for the old people.
The aim of our walks is to help you to discover them, to learn you to know them, to indicate you where to look for them – according to soil, to light, to proximity of other species…
Each month allows new discoveries! It does not use the tansy in March or the nettle in August... Each month also, the circuit is different because all the plants do not grow on the same type of ground.
Your attention, according to the season, will be drawn to one or another particular aspect of nature (birds singing, for example). See below the list of topics.
For all walks (guided in French), the starting point is the Tavern of the museum, in de Ferme castrale of Hermalle-sous-Huy, where you'll also find two remarkable trees listed by the Walloon Region. At 14:00.
The walks (± 8 km) which takes place in Hermalle-sous-Huy or around, ends around 17:00.
The fee is € 9 per person, 7 € per child from 6 to 12 years.
Dogs, obedient and kept on a leash, are welcome!
2023 March 26 – 14:00
Under the sign of a god who symbolizes strength and sensual passion, March was the first month of the Roman year, indicating both the start of agricultural year ... and of military campaigns.
Vegetation, out of his torpor, offers cuckooflower spurge, coltsfoot, corn salad, chickweed, dandelion, coltsfoot.
What will you choose for your salad tonight?
2023 April 23 – 14:00
April again: spring is there, and its time of love. The blackbird sits on its green eggs, the swallows come back in spite of showers.
There is a chance you will discover the Beautiful-Star that perfumes the "wine of May", this Maitrank so prized in the south of our country… and that you can taste in the tavern of the Gourmet Museum.
2023 May 28 – 14:00
In the month of Maïa (mother of Mercury) and Marie (for the Catholics), nature blossoms, pinecone opens while crackling, sky is full of singing larks.
Birds chat in the trees: goldcrest sings, sparrow chirps, blackbird shirps, magpie chatters; listening to their song completes the research of wild edible or medicinal plants.
2023 June 25 – 14:00
Since 25 days, Juno reigns over this month when the year enters in the summer, when days will be the longest.
Last night, the quail called. The oriole sings, the sky is blue and the gardens are full of roses and peonies. Who makes this crumpled paper noise in the coppice ?
It is the redstart that follows you in your discovery of wild edible plants.
2023 July 30 – 14:00
Veni, vidi, vici
once said Jules (Caesar) which gave its name to July.
You also come to Hermalle, see our landscapes, defeat the prejudices that relegate to the rank weeds wild plants yet edible! Our guide is here to help you. Unique starting at 14h.
2023 August 27 – 14:00
Along the slopes, the tansy raises again its yellow capitulums : pick its leaves to flavor your salads or taste the "allumelle à la ténoisie" in the tavern of the Gourmet Museum.
In August (so named in memory of the Roman emperor Augustus), grasshoppers crackle on the meadows, lizards run along the walls, trails crack under the heat that, in principle, devastates the earth.
2023 September 24 – 14:00
With the equinox of September, we enter in the autumn for three months. The day is more yellow, the evening announces the cold. A good mulled wine or a tea with fresh orange will be welcome after this guided walk during which you will have looked for a plant that doesn't comprise chlorophyll but interests most of us. For two reasons: either it is edible and can be delicious, either it is poisonous... and it is better to know it! Our walk of September will make you discover the mushroom!
2023 October 22 – 14:00
The broad-leaved trees get ready to sleep ; they don't anymore feed their leaves which are going to take a red, yellow or even orange colour before falling and forming a crispy carpet under the feet.
Beechnuts, acorns, hazelnuts, chestnuts, are also strewn over the soil ; these fruits often made the daily of our forebears; we always appreciate them... To the edge of woods, we pick the beefsteak fungus, the "verdelet", the chanterelle. The perfume of the ceps drifts; if it didn't freeze, you will maybe find some…
2023 November 26 – 14:00
The birds on the banks of the Meuse, we ate them too!
If you cannot savour them, you however can admire them…
In November, the cold returns and with it the gull.
Oh ! Are you sure that it is a seagull? Would not that be a herring gull? And if it's a seagull, is it the black headed gull?
Our nature guide is there to help you to determine which bird it is and to let you discover its biotope and its cry.
Similarly, for great crested grebes, cormorants, Canada gooses, Egyptian gooses, and many other species that stay on the banks of the Meuse, such as the common sandpiper that whistles while flying, the gadwall and the northern shoveler, the teal and the coot, the common moorhen, the elegant gray heron, and the great egret that almost disappeared as her long nuptial feathers were appreciated to decorate the female hat, the fieldfare, the redwing or the mistle thrush…
And perhaps you will also be lucky enough to see a mute swan? The sound of its wings in flight is up to two kilometers!
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