WME

Convento began as a small Leuven wine shop with a bar and grew into one of the most admired wine addresses in the country, its list ranked Belgium’s best by Star Wine List two years running. Its sommeliers take real delight in explaining what is in the glass. They will pour for us in the Veilingzaal, the old auction hall tucked behind the Optimist on the Vismarkt. Come thirsty. Opinions welcome, apologies not.

Beneath the Place Royale lie the remains of the Coudenberg, for six centuries the seat of dukes, governors and the emperor Charles V, until it burned in 1731. Its cellars, chapel foundations and buried streets are open again. Friends of the cause are welcome: together we shall mingle our blood wine on the ancient stones, in a covenant of defiance.

Sarah Renson trained at Hof van Cleve and The Jane before opening her own pâtisserie in Leuven, where her tarte au citron has a following of its own. We would like to take the club through four of her hands-on sessions, from Flemish classics to bread and pizza. Each lasts two and a half to four hours, is taught in Dutch, and ends with something to take home and something to taste.

• Bokkenpootjes · Tue 10 Nov, Thu 26 Nov (fully booked at present)
• Beignets (Boules de Berlin) · Thu 5 Nov, Wed 25 Nov, Fri 11 Dec (fully booked at present)
• Neapolitan pizza · Sat 14 Nov, 18:30–21:30 · Sat 12 Dec
• Sourdough with Miro Van Vreckem · Sat 19 Dec, 14:00–18:00 · Sun 20 Dec

The boodle fight was born in the Philippine military, where officers and cadets ate together without rank or ceremony; “boodle” was old army slang for contraband treats. Rice is heaped along banana leaves down a long table and crowned with grilled meats, fish, vegetables and fruit, and everyone eats by hand, shoulder to shoulder, at a signal. We will cook it first, then fall upon it together. No cutlery, but certainly manners, which we will learn on the day.

Since 1889 De Wit has woven, cleaned and mended tapestries, and today it restores pieces for the Louvre, the great cathedrals and royal collections across Europe. Its workshops occupy the fifteenth-century refuge of Tongerlo Abbey in Mechelen, where a single tapestry can take a year and many thousands of stitches. We will see the collection, the cleaning tables and the restorers at work. Patience will be provided; bring concentration.

An afternoon at the furnace with master glassblower Daan Theys, in the studio he runs with Chris Miseur in the countryside outside Leuven. You gather, turn and blow a piece of your own, which then spends a day cooling and having its sharp edges softened, a process we could all learn from. It is collected a week later from their gallery on the Rector De Somerplein in Leuven.

• Initiation workshop, 13:00–17:00 · 11, 14 & 15 Nov, 27 & 28 Feb (fully booked at present) · 1, 2 & 3 May
• AFTERWORKshop, 18:00–21:30 · Mon 16 Nov
• Also offered: glass-fusing jewellery (3 hours) and stained glass for the more advanced (20 hours)

The Academy that formed the Antwerp Six, Martin Margiela and Demna sends its students down the runway once a year, from first-year exercises to the Master collections, in a long evening on the old docks. Last June’s graduates were more personal than fashionable: Lucian Freud and vulnerability, ancient matriarchal cultures, female lineage, the history of Palermo, and theatrical menswear in full colour. The next morning, the Master collections can be seen up close at the Academy, Mutsaardstraat 31.

A former chapel on Antwerp’s Zuid, reborn by BVDL Architects as a sanctuary for the body, with a circular reformer studio beneath the soaring ceilings. The work is controlled, precise and harder than it looks, set to music through speakers built into the architecture. We will follow the class with time to stretch, recover and compare notes. Strength, a little penance, and excellent acoustics.

RSR has been putting drivers on Europe’s great circuits for years, and its Spa base sits a few minutes from Spa-Francorchamps, often called the most beautiful track in the world. In an hour with one of their instructors you learn the circuit’s lines and reference points, and how to go quickly while keeping the car, and oneself, in one piece. Bring your own car or borrow one of theirs. Video of your laps is available, to relive them or to prove a point.

The doedelzak is the Flemish bagpipe: a bag, a chanter and a drone, blown by mouth. For centuries it played village weddings and kermesses, and Bruegel painted it puffing away beside his dancing peasants. It all but vanished in the twentieth century, until folk musicians in the 1970s rebuilt it, partly by studying those very paintings. Now it is back, in a drawing room in Heverlee, which is exactly as wonderful and as alarming as it sounds.

Alden Biesen was for centuries a commandery of the Teutonic Knights: a moated castle, a baroque church and a French garden in the hills of Haspengouw, now a Flemish cultural centre. We will spend a week there with Bach, rehearsing by day and listening by evening. Bring your voice, your instrument, or simply your ears, and pack enough patience to deal with the mercurial Greek conductor.

Unhurried in a crisis and impatient in a queue. Listens to the end of every sentence, which unsettles people who are used to being interrupted. Has learned that most things heal if you keep them clean and leave them alone, and applies this to wounds, friendships and pelargoniums alike.

Notices the one crooked frame in a room and says nothing, then quietly straightens it on her way out. Keeps a notebook of overheard sentences. Believes a good question is worth more than a good answer, and asks hers so gently you find you have already told her everything.

Laughs first and loudest, especially at herself. Learned to read the weather before she learned to read people, and finds the skills largely interchangeable. Will drop anything to help you carry something heavy, and will tell you, cheerfully, that you are lifting it wrong.

Patient with trees, less so with committees. Plants things she will never see grow tall, and considers this the whole point. Holds strong opinions about apples, cider and the correct way to argue, which is warmly, at length, and with a second glass.

Precise about small things and generous about large ones. Took up the cello at fifty, plays it loudly and badly, and has never once apologised to the neighbours. Collects people who were told they were not good at something, and proves the teller wrong on their behalf.