Le Fondry des Chiens depuis Nismes

From the car park by the church of Nismes, follow the red rectangles of the commune's Fondry des Chiens walk out of the village and up on to the limestone plateau. Around Nismes the limestone lawns are, the tourist board says, a biotope unique in Belgium, with lizards, grasshoppers and Mediterranean flowers. The loop turns north-east of the village, comes back across the plateau and goes down to the Fondry des Chiens, a natural sinkhole about 20 m deep that rain has cut into the limestone, before returning to the church.

It is 4.2 km round with 89 m of ascent, counted on the unsmoothed heights of our line; allow about 1¼ hours. The commune of Viroinval's own list of its marked walks gives the Fondry des Chiens as 4.5 km with 119 m of climbing; VISITWallonia gives 4.4 km in its text and 6.3 km in its map box. Our ascent is 25% below the commune's figure. The grade is Easy on our scale, which goes by time; the Fondry itself has a short stretch of rough rock path (58 m) that OpenStreetMap maps as demanding mountain hiking.

The Fondry has no guard rails, and a visitor article on the Visit Ardenne site says its rocks can be slippery: keep to the paths and back from the edge, and take care with children. VISITWallonia says the site is accessible all year and entry is free, and that it can be part of hunting grounds between October and December. The commune of Viroinval gives the hunting season as 1 October 2026 to 31 January 2027, and publishes a table of its marked walks closed for hunting each day; the dated notices on this page show the days it lists for the Fondry des Chiens. Red posters are bans (a drive hunt or a period of stalking); yellow posters only inform. The commune names the forestry office (DNF) at Nismes as the reference. The commune's code for walkers asks you to stay on open paths, keep your dog on a lead or leave it at home, and light no fire. The Fondry des Chiens lies in the Viroin state nature reserve, on land owned by the commune of Viroinval and managed by the forestry office (DNF); in Walloon nature reserves fires and pets running loose are forbidden.

The start is a mapped car park beside the church, where the commune's marked walks begin at the large blue sign; OpenStreetMap gives no fee information for it. The Viroinval tourist office is in the village.

Route drawn by Global Adventurer along OpenStreetMap paths (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL), with figures worked out from it. Check the forecast and the ground on the day: paths change.