Toul - Verdun - Sedan - Reims - Vitry le francois - Bar le Duc - Nancy - Lagarde
I am pleased that now at the end of July it is getting cooler. As we still have quite a bit of time we have decided to go up the Canal la Meuse towards Belgium to Verdun. It is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Verdun and we will go to see the Flamme a Lumiere about the 1st world war battles in this area.
The first part of the canal passed through Chalk country, everything was covered in a fine white dust.
Then we were into hay farming on a large scale and also beautiful fields of sunflowers.
We moored overnight along the way on pontoons or bollards erected by the village councils.This is a great way to meet the locals as they often come down to practice their english.
The canal is quite narrow in places bordered with leafy green trees with lovely country scenery of hay fields and white cows beyond.
Along this stretch we met John when we pulled in behind his charter barge Johanna and spent a very pleasant night having a meal and a few drinks together. He told us about Fort Troyon which we visited the next day following a path through the fields, up a hill and along the road to the top. It was very interesting. It is marked on the chart maps but very hard to see.
The charts we use are in book form especially done for canal travel with the locks and kilometres marked and some history of the villages being passed or points of interest not far away from the canal such as the fort also market days. A lot of small villages only have a small deli and the visiting market stall holders provide everything from household goods, curtains, clothes,very fresh fruit and vegetables, cheeses and meat from refrigerated vans.
We arrived in Verdun and moored in the port, right in the centre of town. The town supplies some water and electricity without charge.It was very hot and every boat erected some type of shelter from the sun.
The Flamme et lumiere was excellent, with about 300 actors and about 1000 costumes, men women and children actors, dogs,horses and carts. It was held in a huge quarry with various levels and grandstand seating for 3000 people. Personal FM radio sets were provided for non French speaking visitors . With the fantastic electronic techniques in the war scenes it was like being there as the noise and concussion surrounded you. It really showed the futility of war for people on both sides.
We visited the village of Fleury in the battle area where you can still see the trenches and shell holes, control of the village changed 16 times until nothing was left.
The Ossuary, where as many bones as could be found are interred in remembrance of the people who could not be identified after the wars.
Very sobering.It is hard to imagine whole villages obliterated and people have no homes to go back to. We are very lucky living in Australia.
Along the canal we pass villages with a field of white crosses which is the military cemetary. Many villages have a memorial erected with thanks to the American military who liberated their village. We also pass many bombed bridges which were never repaired, perhaps because the village they served were destroyed in the war.
Well I spoke too soon about the weather it has been cool and now it is the middle of August and it has been raining for six days!! I think summer has gone!!
We decided to go further north to Sedan which has the biggest fortified castle in Europe.
Of course we cant let a castle go by without visiting it and we enjoyed a jousting festival as well.
After Sedan we turned off the Meuse into a small canal at Pont a Bar. This canal is very rural but has a lot of large barges passing through as they load with grain crops on the way to Belgium.
Our next stop was the huge Cathedral where the Kings of France were crowned and the champagne cellars of Reims.
We visited Piper-Heidsieck cellars and went on the electric cars for a tour through the cellars. The special effects tour was very well done and at a reasonable cost with a glass of french champagne at the end.
Reims was very noisy as the port is right under a motorway so after visiting the Cathedral and the cellars we set off along the canal de l'Aisne a la Marne passing through chalky champagne country.
The canal scenery changes as we enter the Canal lateral a la Marne there are moorings along the way for overnight stops.
We passed a very serious fishing competition. Fishing seems to be the major pastime of the French men but we have seen few fish being caught.
The next part of the trip was on the Canal de la Marne au Rhine west, 131 kilometres long with 97 locks. It was on this stretch that Kevin got a hernia which meant a visit to the hospital in Bar le Duc to check out if it needed immediate attention or could wait until we got home. What a hillarious time we had talking our aussie english french and their limited english.Along with doctors, registrars and specialists who all wanted to try out their english and a specialist who only wanted to operate on Kevin because he had never had an Australian patient before, we finally got over that if it was not urgent we would be on our way.
The next exciting part was our trip through the 4.78 kilometre Mauvages Tunnel where a chain driven tug boat takes the boats through the tunnel because of the problem of fumes in such a long tunnel.
After the tunnel we returned along the Marne au Rhine to Toul where we caught up with Monique whom we had met previously when she was walking along the canal at the village of Lay Saint Remy and we had a lovely time practicing our french and her english. I must admit she was much better than us, most french people seem to have learnt english at school.
Our last stop was Lagarde about 30 k from Nancy where we left Courlis for the winter at the Rive de France Port. It is a small village of about 20 houses with a hotel with a restaurant and bar, an old fashioned grocery store, the hire boat port on the canal, a French military cemetery and a German military cemetery at either end of the town and a church with bells that ring every 15 minutes, a real cute place.
A tout a l’heure, auf wiedersehen until 2007
Yvonne and Kevin.
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