There is a path running from the Ring-cut Drève de St Cornelius, slipping beneath the motorway, then following a channelled stream until it meets the Meute.
It is called Raafeikweg, the path of the Raven Oak.
The path itself is recent. It was created when the Chaussée de Mont-St-Jean was expanded into the Ring and the underpass installed. Before that intervention, Cornelius met the Meute at the Belle Étoile, once an important relais in the Forest. That importance has faded.
Yet the name preserves something older. Raafeikweg commemorates a mighty oak, so distinctive that it served as a waymarker between Hoeilaart and Waterloo. It appears on Stevens’ Carte de la Forêt de Soignes in the early years of the twentieth century. Today, like almost all the great named trees of those earlier maps, oak and beech alike, it is gone.
I'll be writing a fuller account of this tree, including its former location in the Newsletter this weekend. If you haven't already, why not sign-up?