In the past, the Fontaine Saint-Nicolas path was used by villagers to get to the woods. And then over the years, part of the path was swallowed up by crops to end at the bottom of the valley at the fountain which gave it its name. Luc Detournay has always known this source which is located on land belonging to the church factory of which he is a member.
The church factory would have bought the land in 1830, I think, to allow people from the village to come and collect water for the household. It wasn’t used for walks at the time, it was only used for cleaning.
And when the City wanted to put the second section of the path between the fountain and the woods back into service, it was necessary to negotiate with the land owners. With the Church Factory, assures Léandre Huart, Brainois alderman for Mobility, things were quite simple.
We also placed a footbridge on this spot since the area was a little more humid. Then, we had a farmer who was not at all impacted by the route of the vicinal and who accepted that we cross his meadow with this famous alternative route. And we finally have a third participant who is the owner of a field and who, after several years of discussions, accepted that we could go through this property.
This is because rehabilitating a trail is not always simple. Even when it has disappeared, when we can no longer even guess its route, it still legally exists. However, to avoid any legal dispute, the route of path no. 16 in the atlas of local roads of 1841 was diverted.
The problem of reopening trails is a very broad problem. We are talking about the extinction of the trail after more than 30 years of non-use. This remains very vague from a legal point of view and so we did not want to venture into this framework because we saw that at one point things were stuck with one of the speakers. And so we preferred the gentle method, discussion, finding solutions together around the table and therefore we arrived at this alternative route solution.
Walkers will therefore find this path which constitutes a famous shortcut to the woods and will no longer stop at the fountain which is patiently restored by the fabrician, passionate about local heritage.
A small oasis of greenery and freshness where Luc Detournay rejoices, it will be good to sit between the two sides of the valley.
And what’s more, when everything is restored, the town told us that they will put a small bench for walkers. All this is magnificent! It’s really relaxing and that’s good.
