Qualla: Ad's Path

Ad's Path: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Polyglot, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ad Wouters was thirteen years old when he started carrying mortar buckets on Belgian construction sites. He spent the next thirty years restoring old churches and monasteries across Flanders, learning the trade from the inside out - plaster, oak beam, stone, polyester resin, gold leaf. Then, in middle age, he fell from a church tower. The accident ended his construction career. It also became, by his own account, the beginning of his real one. Today, the forests south of Leuven hide a 25-kilometer loop called Pad van Ad - Ad's Path - and along it, tucked between beech trunks and beside small ponds, stand more than a dozen sculptures Wouters carved out of fallen oak. There are owls in tree hollows you might walk past without noticing. There is a bat the size of a small car. There is a drowning man assembled from wire mesh and roadside litter. The path is free, the sculptures are weathering, and the artist - whose website still maintains the original itinerary - never charged for any of it.

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Image: Polyglot | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ad's Path: Heverleebos and Meerdaalwoud

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer), CC BY 4.0. The two forests the path runs through are old. Heverleebos and Meerdaalwoud were medieval hunting reserves of the Dukes of Brabant; some of the beech and oak still standing date back three or four centuries. The Dikke Eik - the Fat Oak - that the trail passes around its midpoint ...

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Image: Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer) | CC BY 4.0

Ad's Path: The Sculptures

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ad Wouters, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most of the figures along the path are carved from single fallen oaks, weathered now to silver-grey. There is the Director, the first piece you reach inside the Heverlee Arboretum, sitting in a chair as though about to call a meeting to order. There is Ignatius nearby, and a frie...

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Image: Ad Wouters | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ad's Path: Drowning

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ad Wouters, CC BY-SA 3.0. Roughly two-thirds of the way around the loop, on the shore of a small pond called Geertsvijver, stands a piece that breaks completely with the rest of the trail. It is called Drowning. It is not carved from wood. The figure - a man waist-deep, arms reaching up, mouth open - is w...

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Image: Ad Wouters | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ad's Path: The Practicalities

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Janter~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Leuven is the nearest city, about thirteen minutes by train from Brussels Airport, which makes Ad's Path one of the few proper forest hikes in Europe you can do as a day trip from a transatlantic flight. From Leuven, take De Lijn Bus 1 or 2 down Naamsesteenweg to the corner of Le...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Janter~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Ad's Path: Why the Path Exists

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Athenchen, CC BY 2.5. Ad Wouters could have sold these sculptures. There is a market for outdoor art in Belgium and the Netherlands, and his pieces are skilful enough to fetch real money. Instead, he donated them to the forest. His sole stipulation was that they remain outdoors and free to visit. He k...

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Image: Athenchen | CC BY 2.5