GR 571 Stage 2: Aywaille to Stoumont

On GR 571 Stage 2 I come across quartzite giants, an underground river, a torrent called the Chefna, and the wide skies of the Hautes Fagnes. UPDATED APRIL 2026

Route at a glance

• Distance: Approx. 21 km
• Elevation gain: Approx. 700 m. Sustained climbing through the Chefna valley to the Hautes Fagnes plateau
• Duration: 6-7.5 hours walking time
• Difficulty: Hard; steep and relentless in sections, with some tricky river crossings
• Start: Aywaille railway station (Liège-Luxembourg line)
• End: Stoumont village (accommodation required; no railway station at Stoumont itself)
• Train access: Train to Aywaille; return from Stoumont by taxi or via Stage 3 onward to Trois-Ponts
• Key highlights: Heid des Gattes nature reserve, Remouchamps, Ninglinspo junction, Fonds de Quarreux, Chefna valley, Hautes Fagnes plateau
• Best season: April to October; the Chefna crossings can be genuinely hazardous after heavy rain
• GPX / map: RouteYou, Wikiloc (search GR 571 Stage 2). Topo-guide from grsentiers.org

GR 571 Stage 2: Into the heart of the Ardennes

Stage 2 of the GR 571 is where the walk stops being a pleasantly demanding day out and starts being something more serious. It is the longest stage of the route’s early section. It climbs harder and longer than Stage 1, and it ends on the open plateau of the Hautes Fagnes. These are the high moors that stretch towards the German border, with the sky enormous and the wind unimpeded.

Between Aywaille and those moors, however, the route covers a variety of landscape. I came across a cliff-top nature reserve above the Amblève, a medieval cave system hidden under a village, a geological wonder of quartzite boulders jammed into a river gorge, and a beautiful torrent called the Chefna that the path crosses and recrosses on footbridges of varying reliability.

I walked it in late March, over a weekend that involved grey skies, cold temperatures, and – by the time I reached the plateau – unexpected snow. None of which diminished it in the slightest.

Getting there and overnight

Aywaille is easy to reach by train from Liège on the Liège-Luxembourg line. From Brussels or Leuven, change at Liège-Guillemins; the journey takes around two hours in total. Check timetables at belgiantrain.be.

Unlike Stage 1 and other stages I will cover, this stage does not end at a railway station. Stoumont is a village without a train stop. You will need to arrange accommodation in advance and either stay the night (highly recommended: you can begin Stage 3 from Stoumont the following morning) or arrange a taxi back to Aywaille or Liège. I stayed at a cosy Ardennes B&B that I found via Airbnb, which was excellent. My host gave me a warm welcome after a hard day’s walking, a home-cooked evening meal, and a packed lunch ready for the morning.

The walk: Aywaille to Stoumont

The climb out of Aywaille

The GR 571 leaves Aywaille with the same impatience it showed leaving Comblain-au-Pont on Stage 1: up, steeply, almost immediately. From the river level the path climbs sharply through the woods, gaining height quickly to reach the top of the ridge above the Amblève.

There is a bench and a viewing point at the top, which I was grateful for. I really was out of breath when I reached it.

From the ridge, the views open up across the valley. It was grey when I walked it, but on a clearer day you’ll be able to see the classic deep-cut Ardennes panorama that makes this landscape so distinctive. Ahead, somewhere invisible beyond the forests, lay 21 kilometres of walking.

The Heid des Gattes and the cliff above Remouchamps

The path follows the ridge before descending towards Remouchamps through the Heid des Gattes nature reserve. This is a long, steep cliff face above the right bank of the Amblève, rising almost vertically to 55 metres above the river. The cliff’s south-facing limestone and sandstone supports some of the rarest plant communities in the province of Liège, including species found almost nowhere else in Belgium. You walk above it rather than on it, but the drop into the valley is impressive and the reserve gives the ridge walk a dramatic edge.

Remouchamps itself is a small village in the valley. The path passes through briefly, and if you have time and energy to spare, there is something remarkable just under the village that deserves more than a passing glance.

The Grottes de Remouchamps

Directly below the village of Remouchamps, the Rubicon river flows through one of Belgium’s most extraordinary cave systems. Opened to visitors in 1828, the Grottes de Remouchamps take you on an 800-metre walk through stalactite galleries to a cathedral-like chamber with a 40-metre ceiling. It then returns you by boat along 700 metres of underground river, the longest navigable underground passage in Europe. Palaeolithic hunters sheltered here 8,000 years ago. During the Second World War it served as a refuge again.

The caves are directly on the N633 through Remouchamps and take approximately 1.5 hours to visit. A worthwhile detour, so allow time if you plan to walk on to Stoumont the same day.

Read more about the Caves of Belgium

The Ninglinspo junction

Below Remouchamps, the GR 571 descends through lovely woodland (which I’m sure are even lovelier in spring when the leaves are on) to reach the confluence of the Amblève and the Ninglinspo, where the GR 571 meets the GR 15.

This is a junction worth pausing at, both for the scenery and for the navigational care it requires. Two long-distance paths with identical red-and-white markers crossing at the same point: make sure you leave on the right one!

The Ninglinspo itself – tumbling down from the forested hills above – is one of Belgium’s most celebrated short walks in its own right, and it starts very close to here.

The Ninglinspo walk (to do on another day)

The Ninglinspo drops 250 metres over just 3 kilometres, giving it an 8% gradient and the wild character of a mountain torrent. This is unusual in Belgium’s generally gentle landscape. The valley walk from the Sedoz car park follows the stream upstream through a succession of small waterfalls, natural rock pools with names like the Bain de Diane and the Bain des Naïades, and sections of mossy gorge that feel surprisingly alpine. The round trip is around 6 km and takes 2.5-3 hours; it can be extended to 14 km by combining with the Chefna valley walk. Go on a weekday in high season: the trail is one of Belgium’s most popular and the car park fills early.

Read my guide to the Ninglinspo walk

The Fonds de Quarreux

Just downstream from the Ninglinspo confluence, the GR 571 follows the Amblève to a remarkable geological site. The Fonds de Quarreux is a 1.5-kilometre stretch of river where enormous rounded boulders, some of them two metres across, lie heaped in and across the water. The river threads between them, around them, and over them, never quite blocked but constantly challenged.

The explanation is geological. The valley here is cut through the Cambrian quartzite of the Stavelot massif. This is among the most ancient rock in the Ardennes, laid down as sea-floor sediment between 500 and 400 million years ago and then folded and hardened by the Caledonian mountain-building cycle. Quartzite is exceptionally resistant to erosion; when the valley walls collapsed during the periglacial climate of the Pleistocene, boulders tumbled into the riverbed. Floods over millennia removed everything else, but the quartzite blocks were too large and too hard, so stayed.

University of Liège geologists have found that some of these boulders have been moved downstream by the river by several kilometres; others may have been shifted by ice rafting during Pleistocene cold periods. Some of those rounded stones have been found 90 kilometres away in the Meuse terraces.

The site has been classified as exceptional heritage of Wallonia since 1970, and it is beautiful: a wild river gorge scattered with stones the size of small houses, with steep wooded hillsides above and the constant sound of water finding its way through.

The legend, of course, is better. According to a tale recorded by 19th-century storyteller Marcellin La Garde, a miller called Hubert Chefneux sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the windmill he had always dreamed of. His wife, determined to save him, hid in the mill with a medal of Notre-Dame de Dieupart. The mill refused to turn. The Devil, furious, destroyed the mill, killed the poor woman, and scattered the stones into the Amblève. The quartzite boulders, says the legend, are all that remains of the Moulin du Diable.

The Chefna valley

After the Fonds, the GR 571 leaves the Amblève and turns sharply uphill, following the Chefna stream. This is the climb that defines GR 571 Stage 2. It’s sustained, steep, and relentlessly upward, but it is also the most beautiful section of the walk.

The Chefna is a fast, cold mountain stream, and in late March after a wet winter it was in full flow: cascading over rocks, filling the valley with sound, throwing spray across the path. The route crosses from one bank to the other repeatedly on footbridges. These vary. Some are solid. Some are single planks, wet, slanting, with a long drop into cold water on one side. I crossed at least one of them on hands and knees. I am not ashamed of this. The river looked very cold, and the last thing I wanted to do was slip into it.

The Chefna also marks a historic boundary. In medieval times its upper course separated the Duchy of Luxembourg from the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy, two very different political worlds divided by a small torrent in the forest.

The Hautes Fagnes

As the Chefna climb eases, the trees thin, and the landscape changes abruptly. You emerge onto the plateau of the Hautes Fagnes (the High Fens). It’s Belgium’s largest nature reserve, a treeless, windswept expanse of peat bog, heath and scrub that stretches east to the German border and feels genuinely wild. The contrast after the enclosed forest of the Chefna valley is startling.

When I arrived on the plateau in late March, there was snow on the ground. Not a dusting, but real snow, unmarked and lying flat in every direction. I had not seen snow all winter in Flanders. Here it was waiting for me at altitude. A fun discovery! Yes, it was cold and barren, but completely invigorating.

The final kilometres descend from the plateau through the forests back into the valley and into the village of Stoumont.

The history along the way

Aywaille and the liberation of September 1944

The memorials and plaques that appear along the ridge above Aywaille, such as machine-gun positions, bronze tablets, and small monuments in village squares, are reminders that this stretch of the Amblève valley was a frontline in September 1944.

Aywaille was liberated on 9 September 1944 by the 60th Infantry Regiment of the 9th Infantry Division, US Army. The regiment had advanced from Sprimont, a few kilometres north, specifically to secure the bridges over the Amblève: the same river you walk beside.

After the breakout from Normandy, the Allied advance across Belgium was astonishingly rapid, and the Ardennes towns fell in quick succession. The welcome in Aywaille was understandably warm.

Three months later, in December 1944, the same valley would become contested ground again during the Battle of the Bulge. This was the desperate German counteroffensive that pushed American forces back through the Ardennes before being ultimately defeated. The monuments along Stage 2 commemorate both the liberation and the fighting that followed.

The Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy

The upper Chefna valley once marked the edge of the Principality of Stavelot-Malmedy, one of the more unusual political entities of medieval Europe. Founded around the Abbey of Stavelot (established in 648) the principality was an ecclesiastical state, ruled by its prince-abbots and subject to the Holy Roman Emperor rather than any secular lord. Its territories straddled the Amblève, Salm, and Lienne valleys for over a thousand years, until the French Revolution swept it away in 1795. The abbey’s influence shaped the landscape in ways still visible today: place names, administrative boundaries, and the very layout of villages throughout the Ardennes all bear traces of its long centuries of control.

The other stages of the GR 571

The GR 571 is a circular long-distance footpath covering approximately 165 km. You can read about some of the other stages here:

• Stage 1: Comblain-au-Pont to Aywaille
• Stage 3: Stoumont to Trois-Ponts
• Stage 4: Trois-Ponts to Vielsalm
• Stage 5: Vielsalm to Gouvy
• Stage 6: Gouvy to Verleumont

A final note

The first stage of the GR 571 was an introduction: a single day, a gentle (relatively speaking) initiation, back home for dinner. GR 571 Stage 2 is the first overnight, the first genuinely hard day, the first sense of the route as something sustained and cumulative.

There is the Fonds de Quarreux, which is simply extraordinary, with its big ancient stones in a wild river gorge, with a local legend that does them justice. There is the Chefna, which I remember less for its beauty than for the crossing where I abandoned all dignity and went across on all fours while the river roared below me. And there is the moment the forest ends and the plateau opens up and the snow is lying there, unexpected, unmarked, utterly silent.

Maggy’s Ardennes B&B is a highly recommended place to stay at (if she is still running it). The hot dinner, England beating France in the rugby on the television: these details live in the memory alongside the walking. That is what an overnight stage on a long-distance path gives you: a day that becomes a small complete story, beginning and end and everything in between.

Have you walked GR 571 Stage 2? If so, I’d be interested to know how you got on.

Denzil Walton

I created Discovering Belgium in 2011 to share the country’s hidden stories, fascinating places, and remarkable people. Through articles, photography, and audio walks, I share discoveries that reveal Belgium beyond the obvious. Hope you enjoy this site.