Val Joly, Trélon and Liessies: France's Largest Lake North of Paris, the Glassworks and the Abbey Park

Required Activities

• Walk or cycle part of the 19 km of shoreline at Val-Joly, following the drowned valley of the Helpe Majeure and its two side arms, the Orbay and the Voyon, out to the 315 m concrete dam at the far end and down to the foot of its 18 m wall

• Go to the MusVerre at Sars-Poteries, ten kilometres west, which holds the largest public collection of contemporary glass art in France — more than 550 sculptures by about a hundred artists — and find the bousillés, the pieces the glassworkers of the village made for themselves in their breaks when two bottle works here employed more than 800 men

• Walk the abbey park at Liessies and trace the monks' waterworks from the 5-hectare Grand étang down through the channels that fed the abbey, finishing at the Bûcher aux Moines in the middle of the park; the abbey church itself went in 1791, and the parish church down the road keeps what was saved from it

• Walk the rue Clavon-Collignon at Trélon along the enclosure wall of the Parant glassworks, listed in February 2023, and pick out from the street the chimney, the gas producer and the great hall that still holds the Boëtius and Stein furnaces where the dark green bottle glass was blown