A local artist has set up an anarchic 'urban safari' of the grim sites of the Belgian city ? dubbed the planet's ugliestBelgium. It's not the most obvious tourist destination at the best of times, its charms sometimes so subtle as to be invisible to the traveller's eye. I'm allowed to say that: I live here. But imagine bypassing the obvious cultural and gastronomic centres that are Bruges, Brussels and Ghent and heading for the depressed ex-steel town of Charleroi, recently voted "ugliest city in the world" by readers of Dutch newspaper Volkskrant.Charleroi has some of the highest unemployment rates in Belgium and a moribund coal and steel industry, so it's hard to see what would draw visitors to the country's third-largest city. But local art graduate Nicolas Buissart has decided to make the most of its decaying industrial heritage with his Urban Safari, an action-packed adventure around a town whose very name strikes fear into the hearts of even the most stoic Belgians. Charleroi Adventure promises to take visitors on an epic trip that takes in "the place where Magritte's mother committed suicide, the house of the (Belgian serial killer) Marc Dutroux ? and the most depressing street in all of Belgium", all for ?25pp for a five- or six-hour tour, including a picnic. The concept has angered the municipal authorities, but the safari now attracts visitors from across Europe.At first sight, Charleroi looks no worse than any medium-sized European manufacturing town; in fact it's better than many. A brief walk through the town on a Saturday afternoon reveals a lively pedestrianised centre, with cafes and an organic bakery. I bet you'd have to look hard for an organic vegan muffin in Rotherham.But these are not the parts of Charleroi the Urban Safari focuses on, and Nicolas, a gangly enthusiast loads me and my fellow urban adventurer, a local student, straight into the back of his filthy white transit van with instructions to duck if we see a police car. We set off on our tour of the dark industrial heart of the lowlands. The student, prematurely but presciently, offers me an anti-bacterial wipe. The safari, which involves thrilling amounts of covert climbing through holes in fences and over walls, starts with a walk along the eerily deserted tracks of Charleroi's ghost metro, completed after more than 10 years of work in the early 1980s and, in a triumph of Belgian absurdity, mostly never used. We peer at empty stations ravaged by graffiti and vandalism. We wander into and around the vast, rusting abandoned steel works, then hike to the top of a slag heap.Nicolas rather archly points out a spot where we can have our photograph taken next to a burnt-out car and a blackened, blank wall decorated with a mural of a giant, smiling cone of chips, if we so desire. From there, we go on to one of the oldest steelworks in the valley, Les Forges de la Providence, constructed by English steel pioneer John Cockerill in 1836 and now used as a workshop and performance space by local artists. Their beer cans and welding equipment are strewn around the original smelting shop and forge. The scale of these factories is extraordinary; we walk, silenced, through giant cathedrals of industry, broken and deserted.After a trip down the meandering, grey, rue de Mons ("the ugliest road in Belgium") and around a deserted warehouse, now a vast rubbish dump where schoolchildren play knee-deep in rubble, the safari concludes, with fitting surreality, in an out-of-town shopping centre cafe. Nicolas's usual pit stop, a converted aeroplane in an industrial estate, surrounded by giant orange plastic palm trees, is shut.The safari is an odd mix of farcical and sobering. Nicolas is a funny, anarchic guide with genuine affection for his home town. Nevertheless, the real story of Charleroi is bleak; it's a town with its heart ripped out by decades of industrial decline. I board my train back to Brussels moved, shaken and with real relief."Ugliness has one great advantage over beauty" says one of the artists in the Cockerill steelworks, portentously quoting Serge Gainsbourg, as all arty francophones must do by law several times a year. "It is not diminished by the passage of time." Perhaps the Charleroi town council would do well to consider that.? Charleroi Adventure's Urban Safaris in English (+32 494 982643, charleroiadventure.com) cost ?25pp. Returns from London to Charleroi, via Brussels on Eurostar (08432 186186, eurostar.com) start from �69. An overnight stay in Charleroi is only recommended for the hardiest travellers. The Hotel Pantone (pantonehotel.com; doubles from ?79) near Brussels Midi Station (45 minutes from Charleroi) is a good contrast to the grey of the safari. The hotel is affiliated with the colour matching company and the Pantone theme extends to different coloured roomsBelgiumCity breaksguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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