The best walks and hikes around Sains-Du-Nord

With his work Column of Builders, Hassan Zarrou invites us to pay tribute to all those who have shaped our lands with their hands, their knowledge, and their hearts. Standing in the heart of the bocage landscape, this sculpture also evokes the colors of his native Morocco, thus offering a bridge between our cultures.

Five fingers made of braided willow branches emerge from the earth to embrace a solitary oak tree. Like the gestures of an invisible giant, they seem to support it, protect it, and offer it a benevolent presence. This plant-like hand is both an offering that artist Fred Martin wanted to make to the forest and a gift he offers you. He invites you to realize that each tree, guardian of the woods, deserves attention, care, and gratitude.

Emerging from among the trees, a herd of deer stares at you. But look closely, these deer have something special... Created from chairs adorned with branches resembling antlers and artificial grass growing on their seats, this work by Fiona Paterson combines the natural and the domestic, the wild and the civilized. By giving the furniture animal features and situating it in a forest setting, the work invites you to reconsider the human presence in the natural world, not as dominant, but as discreetly integrated, even displaced. Artist: Fiona Paterson

you can eat and sleep there.

The Helpe Majeure crosses in Flaumont-Waudrechies an old flour mill dependent on the Hautmont Abbey, whose existence is attested since the 15th century and which was transformed into a marble sawmill in 1883 (in operation until 1990). The current visible buildings date from the 18th century and were probably built when the mill was sold by the abbey in 1745. Before 1905, the mill was purchased by the Maybon family who, instead of the mill, installed armored saws to cut the marble, using the river to provide the necessary energy. After the First World War the mill belonged to the Cordier family.

Built in the 18th century, Château de la Motte was originally a farm belonging to Liessies Abbey, used as a retirement home and infirmary for the monks. The structure was supposedly erected in 1725, but a bluestone lintel bears the date 1755. The château, long owned by the Lhomme family, was divided in two around 1925. A large bourgeois house next to the farm became a hotel-restaurant, which in 1936 was run by the Soufflet de Fourmies family, grandparents of Franck Plateau, the current owner. In the 1980s, Mrs. Plateau (Frank's mother) and her two sisters continued to run the hotel restaurant, which was taken over by Franck Plateau and his wife in 2000. All the buildings are constructed of brick for the entire walls, and bluestone and local marble for the window frames, chains, bands, and cornices. From the pond, the plan appears simple: U-shaped, with a square tower rising in the center of the horizontal beam of this U. The two buildings forming the parallel sides are pierced by a cart door, which leads to the open courtyard overlooking the pond. The entrance to the dwelling is located on the ground floor of the two-story tower, which is crowned with a picturesque roof in three distinct volumes: the four upright sides, in inverted cavettes, with skylights, are extended by a vertical, rectangular, closed campanile, itself crowned by an inverted pavilion. The water from the forge was used to power machinery. At the foot of the dike, a dovecote dominates, with a roof barely simpler than that of the castle tower. Some of the old buildings are characteristic of the construction of this region.

A must see

Pretty, peaceful, nature.