G3 - Pa d'là l'Eau - 5km

Parking at the former Gembes train station.

Start at the Gembes Mill.

A short climb leads to a very beautiful viewpoint over Gembes. In the distance, Haut-Fays to the NW and Porcheresse to the SE. On the left, at Le Mont, stands the farm-castle of the former Lords of Sclassin, which they occupied after the destruction of their fortified castle in the 16th century.

The village lay on the boundary between the Lordship of Sclassin, which, like Daverdisse and Porcheresse, belonged to the Duchy of Luxembourg, and the Lordship of Gembes, which depended on the Duchy of Bouillon. In the incredible mosaic of principalities, fiefs, sub-fiefs, etc. that made up these territories under the Ancien Régime, the village of Gembes thus found itself, for a century, straddling the border between France and the Spanish, then Austrian, Netherlands. France had acquired the Duchy of Bouillon under the Sun King in 1676, and the French Republic was not to annex all of the Low Countries until 1794.

The path reaches Sodimont, the highest point of Gembes between the valleys of the Almache and the Rancenne. This hill, once wooded (coppice cut every 18–20 years) and cleared by the inhabitants, was definitively cleared for crops in 1932. The open landscape of fields and meadows that gives Sodimont its charm dates from this period.

The path enters the woods and descends toward Pas d'la l'eau (“beyond the water”), the name given by the people of Porcheresse to the meadows and woods beyond the Almache. The walk returns to Gembes through the woods of the Virée de Sodimont. This part of the route is shared with walks G3 and G4.