The Chene a Clous of Herchies

Visitors to this oak do not stand back and admire it, they drive a nail into it. Rub the nail against whatever ails you, hammer it into the bark, and the illness is said to stay behind in the wood. Thousands of nails now stud the trunk and low branches, a folk cure old enough that nobody can say who drove the first one. The tree stands beside a small chapel to Saint Antoine de Padoue along the Sentier des Chats outside Herchies, and the whole roadside shrine goes by the name chene de Saint-Antoine locally. What visitors see today is not the original patient: that oak died and this one was replanted in 1954, so at roughly 70 years old it is young by the usual standard of a project like this. What has not changed is the practice, recognised as Walloon regional heritage since 1985 and popular enough that the oak reached the final six of Belgium's 2019 Arbre de l'Annee. The pin here marks the general footpath rather than a surveyed trunk position, so expect a short walk along the Sentier des Chats to actually find it among the nails.