The monks of the Abbey of St-Remy have carved out a tranquil little niche for themselves near Rochefort, where they create three beers distinguished by their caps of red, green, and blue. The strongest of the three weighs in at 11.3 percent alcohol, but each is hearty. I compare all of them, at once, at a sidewalk bar in the village, and try to keep track of which has the faint cocoa aftertaste, which finishes with dark cherry. If there's a better way to unwind after a long day's drive, I don't want to know about it.

Day Two, 195 Miles: Rochefort to Poperinge
The drive to Chimay is a straight shot southwest on Route 99, parallel to and not far from the French border. Along the way, I stop in Treignes to check out the cathedral, which, as it happens, is about to put up an exhibition on the Trappists, although I'm a tad early for that. By late morning, I arrive at the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Scourmont, where the monks have been brewing since 1862. The meditative atmosphere is conducive to a stroll on the grounds, where paths cut into the woods and open up in bright glades. A somber statue of Saint Joseph overlooks the ferns and spruce trees, and a small cemetery records a century and a half of monks living and dying in solitude.

Here, too, one can hear but not see the brewery, which churns out thousands of liters every day. The monks do their best to keep it low-key: The bottling is done in a modern plant off the grounds, and the drinking is done even farther afield. I stop at a roadside café on the way out of town to try the Chimay Rouge. One comment: Every single beer I've ever drunk has had roasted barley in it, but this is the first time I can actually taste it—a subtle note of a fine dark bread that's been toasted, liquefied, and perhaps lightly dusted with cinnamon or vanilla. I spend my hour of detoxifying wondering how the hell they do that.

A slight detour takes me into Brabant-Wallon, and as the landscape flattens out, I head west to Flanders. On Highway 40, I flip the Mégane back to warp speed, and once on the E42, I scorch west past Tournai and Lille toward Ypres. The Ardennes Forest fades to a blip of a memory, and the whole width of Belgium zips past in just a couple of hours.

A throng has crammed Ypres. Cars, pedestrians, motorcycles, and unseen but heard marching bands fill the streets around the east end of town, a congestive mayhem exacerbated by the closing off of the city's main arteries. Sidewalk café crowds spill out onto the already crammed roads, and I crawl along like cream cheese in the bloodstream, waiting for the angioplasty. Incredibly, I find a parking space but not a hotel room. I learn that it's the eve of an automobile race, the Belgium Ypres Westhoek Rally.

I want to see Ypres, but the humanity is overwhelming. I do take the time to admire the triumphal arch on the east end of the city, and I find it is not possible to look at the classical Menin Gate without feeling a chill, a breeze blown across the breadth of a wasted century. "To the British Armies of the Empire who stood here from 1914 to 1918," the inscription reads, "and to those of their dead who have known no grave."