You're right, Auburn, it is a lovely setting. Truely a "golden valley". Sorry I should have made that clear in my earlier post.AuburnAle wrote:Uncle Bobby. Through some very broken English they told us we could not see the brewery because it was a national holiday, I didn't realize it was like that every day. Sorry about that. I would say it's still worth a visit, it's a pretty impressive brewery setting even if you can't see the actual equipment (although you can see small pieces of it if you peek through the cracks in the fences).
Cheers
The gift shop is not at all tacky. And many of the the products they sold were produced in either the Orval monstery or in monasteries in other parts of Belgium. (I bought my mum some lavendar oil.) And the Orval cheese is actually quite good.
I recall them also allowing (for a fee) access to certain parts of the monastery, including a video presentation and an exhibit with models of the old monstery and discussions of the founding of the new monastery.
And you can actually sneak a peek into the brewery through the delivery doors facing out onto the road that skirts the monstery's perimeter wall.
Here is a link to the Orval website. If your timing is right, it appears that they do have "open door days".
One last note -- the town sits right on the border with France. But for the slightly overgrown hut marked "Douane", and a slight change in the road signs, you wouldn't know that you were in a different country.
Good luck.