The journey is
fairly direct and through mainly flat, arable farmland, which is the norm for
the area now that mining has finished. We are surprised, after about an hour,
to see that the roads dips then rises: the first proper hill we’ve seen since
we got here over three months ago. The road is pretty straight, another indication of the geography:
without major hills to negotiate, it’s easiest to go straight on.
We stop for
lunch at Vervins, the only town of any reasonable size on the route. It’s
Sunday lunch in August, and the town is very, very quiet. The few restaurants
we see are closed for holidays and we head for the sound of plates and cutlery coming
from the main square. There’s a bar with
tables outside and we choose chicken with couscous. There’s lots of it and it
tastes wonderful. We struggle but manage to eat if all and know we won’t want
much in the evening.
We head into
Reims, find the tourist office, buy a sandwich for later then find our b and b.
It’s in a tiny village (houses and a church, no shops or bar) in the middle of
yet more flat farmland. There’s a lovely garden to sit in, a glass of home-made
apple juice each, a comfortable bed and a good shower. Breakfasts are good,
with company varying each day: mostly French, with Swedes and Dutch/Flemish to
add variety. We learn a lot during our stay about the production of sugar beet,
cereals and Champagne.
Days are spent
in the city: a City Pass gives us free entry or reductions on museums and public
transport and some sort of benefit in restaurants, usually a free glass of
champagne. We find one restaurant La Table Amoureuse, which provides a three course menu of the day for 17.50€
(approximately £15) and like it so much at lunchtime that we go back in the
evening but they have no space, so we book for lunch the following day, just to
make sure. We make do with another place round the corner: not quite as good
but a free glass of champagne and a digestif
liqueur, plus entertaining placemats, mean it’s no great problem.
 | |
| French homework. Jokes and interesting facts. |
As well as
enjoying our food, we made the most of the free/reduced entry with a bus tour
around the city which showed us some of the more distant sites. A two-hour
guided tour of the cathedral was very informative, though our brains were quite
full by the time we finished. We free-bussed across town to the St Remy basilica
and the museum next door,
went to the Musée
des Beaux-Arts, the Cryptoportique (a
semi-underground storage unit or council chamber - nobody's completely sure - built by the Romans)
 |
| Cheery archbishops at the Basilica de St Remy. |
It's difficult to go anywhere in northern France without reminders of one or both World Wars. Rheims suffered greatly in the first: 80% of the city was destroyed by bombs and there are memorials to those killed or deported in the second. Because of the major destruction of the 14-18 War, much of the rebuilding is in Art Nouveau or Art Deco style.
 | ||
| The Market Hall. "Le Boulingrin." It used to house a bowling green.Think about it............. |
 | |
| The stalls in the market hall. One of the advantages of going at holiday time is that we got such a good view of the building. |
The return home
was punctuated by a stop for lunch in Laon, where we found out how to pronounce
it (like “long” but without the final g). We parked near the lower part of town
and walked up to the older part: that certainly rated the adjective “upper” and
I wished I’d started counting how many steps there were after the path became
too steep to be just a path. We had lunch, a short visit to the cathedral and a
tour of the underground citadel. The latter was interesting, brain-filling but
interesting and also clearly demonstrated the height of the hill.
Back home,
shopping done, washing in the machine. The remaining three days have been spent in
recovery mode……………………..
No comments:
Post a Comment