Between Brassinelaan and Lorraine in Rhode-St-Genèse, there is a short path, some 400m long, called the Chemin du Beau Hêtre. However you will not find a beautiful beech tree along it. Some nice ones, yes, but none that remarkable. There is a bench, should you find the walk tiring, but the view from it is rather poor.
When you reach Lorraine it is not hard to see that the path once continued further into the Forest. It used to join the Chemin de Beau Chêne just by the memorial stone that has lost its brass plaque.
There used to stand two great trees near each other, one an oak which still survives and the other a beech which was named after Comte Amédée Visart de Bocarmé who was Président du Conseil Supérieur des Forêts a century ago. He gave a speech in 1920 at the inauguration of the Foresters’ Memorial which you may be familiar with.
The tree fell during the night of the 14th of November 1969. It was 295 years old, 4.75 m in circumference and 46 m tall. It had been dedicated to the Comte on the 15th of June 1897.
Some time later the section of the path was closed. The beech returned to the soil, as we all must.
The photo of the fallen tree is from the 1971-1 edition of the magazine Brabant.