Extratrail is a network of over 30 marked trails in the Pays des Sources in the Belgian Ardennes Region. Routes vary in length and elevation gain. Each route begins at the Tourist Information Offices in the participating Belgian towns and communes (Spa, Stoumont, Jalhay, Stavelot, Theux, Trois-Ponts & Malmedy).
There is also a network-spanning long route of 157km: the Ultra Trail Des Sources (UTDS).
This is a long distance trail (110km) around and through the complete Nationaal Park Hoge Kempen in Limburg. Altough there is little to no elevation gain (except some terrils), it is a nice trail for a day out.
There are also a whole bunch of smaller distances marked routes, starting at the different access gates of the National Park.
This is a long distance trail (80km) in the Libin area of the Belgian Ardennes. This trail is 100% off-road, mostly on forest paths.
Make sure to check the hunting information if you want to run this trail in autumn.
This is a network of nodes with marked paths between each 2 nodes, forming a network. This is a good resource to build routes if you don't have a GPS-navigation device. I have been seen running self-made routes with a piece of plastified paper, with node numbers written on them, in my hand.
Another network of marked trails, in the Famenne region in Belgium, in the same manner of the Extratrail network. They provide different lengths of marked trail per village.
Escapardenne is an organisation who maintains 2 long distance permanently marked trails: Éisleck and Lee, with a total length of about 160km.
Both trails can be run consecutively, as the end of the Lee trail is the start of the Éislek trail.
Local marked trails
Many villages and towns, especially in the Ardennes, will have a set of permanently marked routes.
Those are primarly designated as walking or hiking routes, but are easily used for trail running too.
Most of the time they use 1- or 2-color geometric figures (circle, square, rectangle, triangle, ...).
Often these routes start at the local tourist office, the village church or market place.
GR-network
GR (from French Grande Randonnée or Dutch Grote Routepad) are a great network of marked routes in parts of Europe. They are not exclusively on trail. Depending on the region, there can be a significant part of the route on roads. But they will always strive to show you the beautiful places and views in the region. And they usually are long distance. Normal GR routes are typically point-to-point, but there are a lot of GR de Pays that are loops.
Routes are marked in both directions.
The UK has a rich heritage of long distance walking. There are a lot of marked long distance trails employing public right of way paths throughout the country. The most notorious ones are managed by the National Trails organisation.
Routes are marked in both directions.
This initiative is found in several French places (and one Belgian). Each Station de Trail will provide a number of routes of different length and difficulty.
Sweden's long distance routes
As far as I know there is no single place of truth grouping all the Swedish long distance trails. They seem to depend on the local National or Regional parks, or even on local volunteers communities.
These are the trails I've hiked or run, but there are a whole bunch of others:
Höga Kustenleden, (part of) Tjustleden.
The Mullerthal Trail consists of 3 connected loops, for a total of 115km, in the most beautiful part of Luxembourg.
Next to the main loops, there are 4 extra loops.
The (paper) map of Mullerthal Trail also shows other local marked trails.
Together these form a big network of permanently marked trails.
places to look for long distance races
Betrail: trail races in Belgium and Europe, have 100miles and 200miles distance filters in their calendar.
cemetries usually are a great place to fill your flasks: they almost always have a drinking water tap.
They are also easy to find on OpenStreetMap while planning your route.
make sure to check the local hunting information when planning to run in that particular season, especially in the Ardennes and in many French regions. This information should be available at the local town halls.
For Wallonia, it is grouped in ChasseOnWeb.
(tools) I use
Komoot is my primary route building tool, mainly due to the seamless integration in my Garmin watch.
brouter (alternative) is another great routing software, with many profiles for different sports and transportation modes. They don’t offer a way to save routes, it’s build and export only.
In case I want you (or my friends and family) to follow where I am on my adventure, I use Ferrett. This great tool is still in alpha-testing. But if you’re interested in using it, I am sure @pjaspers will set you up with an account. (disclaimer: I am a Ferrett tester)
After my run, I will check into Intervals.icu for all the stats. I also use this great tool to make my training schedule and to follow my progress. It’s free to use, with the possibility to donate a yearly fee, which I happily do.
Often, when on holiday, my modus operandi is to buy the local hiking maps (or I buy them before I leave, even better). In some countries, local marked trails are also on the hiking maps (France, UK, Switzerland). Based on this map I will plot my route, trying to match it as much as possible to marked trails.
When I plan to sleep near the starting location of the trail the night before, I will search for a good spot on park4night.