Maxted Travels with Modestine 2

Round Europe with Modestine 2007

2007-08-20T17:17:00.000+01:00

Key and map to Maxted Travels with Modestine 2,
covering 1 April to 30 July 2007.

Click the map to see full size with links to the text.
In all Modestine travelled 6337 miles and consumed 611 litres of diesel. To this should be added about 500 miles for the ferry crossings and journeys by public transport. The total cost of the four months away was about £4565, including £697 for an overhaul of Modestine before we set out. Campsites accounted for about £900, diesel about £435 and ferry crossings about £275. The remainder was made up of items such as food and wine, public transport, internet access, gifts to friends and £50 for the complete works of Bach on 155 CDs!

The details given for each of the postings listed below are: a running number, the first day of the posting, the title - which is a hotlink - and the main places included.

01. You-can't get too much of a good thing!
Setting the scene.

02. 6 Apr. Normandy
Trouville, Deauville, Bavent, Regnéville, Abbaye de Hambye, Bayeux

03. 9 Apr. Normandy and Franche-Comté
Suisse Normande, Caen, Clécy, Orne, Sées, Gien, Vézelay, Champagne-sur-Loue, Arbois

04. 14 Apr. Lake Annecy to Lake Maggiore
Annecy, Gorges de Fier, Salgesch, Chamonix, Col de la Forclaz, Simplon Pass, Lake Maggiore, Baveno

05. 18 Apr. Lake Maggiore and Milan
Isola de Pescatore, Isola Bella, Isola Madre, Pallanza, Milan

06. 22 Apr. Lake Iseo and Brescia
Lake Iseo, Iseo, Brescia, Lake Garda, Peschiera, Cislano

07. 24. Apr. Verona and Vicenza
Peschiera, Verona, Vicenza

08. 26 Apr. Venice and Aquilea
Venice, Burano, Torcello, Lido, Murano, Aquilea

09. 1 May. Trieste and Slovenia
Duino, Triste, Lipica, Postojna, Predjama

10. 4 May. Vrh to Krk
Krk

11. 6 May. Down the Dalmatian coast
Krk, Dalmatia, Vodice, Skradinski Buk, Skradin, Sibenik, Primosten, Trogir, Stobrec

12. 9 May. Split and Dubrovnik
Split, Dalmatia, Dubrovnik

13. 13 May. Bosnia
Magistrala, Mostar, Neretva Canyon, Sarajevo, Butmir, Slavonski Brod

14. 17 May. From Croatia into Hungary
Slavonsi Brod, Pécs, Szekszárd, Tihany

15. 22 May. Balaton and Budapest
Székesféhervár, Budapest, Veszprém, Balatonfüred, Badacsony, Hegymagas, Keszthely

16. 26 May. In north-west Hungary
Keszthely, Héviz, Szombathely, Köszeg, Gyömöre

17. 29 May. Bratislava
Bratislava, Modra, Senica, Hodonin, Trebric

18. 2 Jun. Prague and Karlovy Vary
Benesov, Konopiste, Jesenice, Prague, Karoly Vary

19. 7 Jun. Down but not out in Germany
Potucky, Zwickau, Gera, Weimar, Tiefurt, Apolda

20. 12 Jun. Goslar and Göttingen
Bad Frankenhausen, Wernigerode, Goslar, Salzgitter Bad, Okertal, Seeburger See, Ebergötzen, Göttingen

21. 16 Jun. Fulda and Frankfurt
Fulda, Frankfurt am Main, Bad Homburg

22. 18 Jun. The Rhine and the Moselle
Rhine, Lorch, Lorelei, Sankt Goar, Moselle, Burg Eltz, Cochem, Hunsruck, Saarburg, Trier

23. 22 Jun. Luxembourg
Nennig, Luxembourg, Diekirch

24. 24 Jun. Nancy and Domrémy
Ars-sur-Moselle, Pont-à-Mousson, Nancy, Domrémy

25. 26 Jun. Verdun
Verdun

26. 28 Jun. Beauvais, Rouen, Honfleur
Chalons-en-Champagne, Champagne, Beauvais, Lyons-la-Forêt, Rouen, Honfleur

27. 4 Jul. Caen and the Cotentin
Caen, Luc-sur-Mer, Saint-Vaaste-la-Hogue, Gatteville, Barfleur, Omanville-la-Rogue, Omanville-la-Petite, Cap de la Hague, Joburg, Vauville, St.- Germain-le-Gaillard

28. 8 Jul. The Cotentin and Mont St Michel
Carteret, Lessay, Hauteville-la-Guichard, Coutances, Granville, Avranches, Mont-St.-Michel, Pontorson, Mortain

29. 12 Jul. Calvados
Domfront, Bagnoles-de-L'Orne, Carrougers, Falaise, Caen, Arromanches, Port-en-Bessin

30. 16 Jul. The Loire
Pocé-sur-Cisse, Chaumont, Amboise, Chambord, Chedigny, Chenonceau

31. 22 Jul. Southern Brittany
Ancenis, Nantes, Port-Louis, Lorient, Pont-Aven, Concarneau, Rosporden

32. 26 Jul. Finistère
Pleyben, Guimiliau, Saint-Thégonnec, Huelgoat, Guissény, Brest, Landerneau, Roscoff

Map 2007

2007-08-20T17:05:00.001+01:00

Clickable map showing the route of our travels
Because of the scale not all places are linked to. Where places occur more than once, the link is to the first posting on which it is mentioned.

Finistere

2007-08-07T09:57:00.000+01:00

Thursday 26th July 2007, Guisseny, Brittany
It rained all night and our pitch was a muddy quagmire this morning. Surprisingly, and to our great relief, Modestine did not get bogged down and by the time we reached the notaire's office in Briec the rain had been replaced by a blustery wind that has continued for most of the day.

Of course at the notaire's the only person who could help us was on leave until next Tuesday. As we are returning to England on Monday the secretary agreed to pass on a letter from us to our friend, via the notaire on her return to work.

As we were in the heart of Brittany we decided to investigate the interior with its forests, rivers and moorland region known as the Montaignes Noires. Inland Brittany is known as the Argoat (woodland) whereas the coastal part is the Armor (sea).

First we stopped at Pleyben where we discovered the first of a series of several granite churches, elaborately carved and decorated in the 16th and 17th centuries. Together they form a circuit through the Argoat known as Les Enclos Paroissiaux (parish closes). Each enclos has a church, an ornate belfry, an ossuary, a calvary and a triumphal entrance. They are all heavily carved and decorated and surrounded by a granite wall to safeguard the graveyard and keep out pigs, dogs and other animals generally found within the streets of villages during the 16th century. It became a challenge in this part of Brittany for each parish to attempt to produce a more decorated and original calvary than those of the neighbouring parishes and the results are quite stunning. After travelling so far around Europe and seeing so many rare and beautiful sights, these little granite churches and their religious decoration still have the power to astonish us with their simple beauty.

Parish enclos, Pleben
Church tower and cloché, Pleben
Triumphal entrance, Calvary and church, Pleben
Detail of the Calvary, carved in granite, Pleben
The churches at that time played a pivotal role in village life. Few country people could read or write and the stained glass windows, symbolic friezes, wooden carvings and painted saints inside the church, together with the figures on the granite calvary in the churchyard, interpreted the Christian Faith for people. They were picture books in wood, glass and stone, the bandes dessinées of their time teaching parishioners in graphic images about the Bible and the life hereafter. They show scenes from the life of Christ and the saints, frequently dressed in 16th century contemporary costume. Mixed with the figures of the saints and tableaux from the books of the Bible are frequently found Celtic strapwork patterns and pagan symbols – lion's heads, grotesques and monsters representing Hell. Beside each church stands the ossuary. Originally people were buried in the churchyard for a period of time before their bones were exhumed and placed in the ossuary - frequently stacked in reliquaries – to create further burial space for new occupants. The ossuaries were normally decorated with carved figures representing Death or with skulls and bones as a reminder to the faithful of what lay ahead for them.

Church porch, Pleben
Inside the church porch, Pleben
Figures inside the church, Pleben
Roof frieze inside the church, Pleben
Organ loft, Pleben
17th century confessional, Pleben
High altar, Pleben
Detail from a side altar, (note "modern" dress.) Pleben
Roof detail showing carving of a monster holding the supporting timbers, Pleben
Having been fascinated by the enclos at Pleyben we determined to spend the rest of the day exploring the countryside as we made our way around the circuit visiting some of the other churches on the way. If collectively Breton enclos are not yet on the Unesco list of World Heritage sites they most definitely should be. Other particularly beautiful enclos are to be seen at Guimiliau and St.Thégonnec.

Enclos at Guimiliau

Detail of the calvare, Guimiliau
Altar at Guimiliau
Church and triumphal entrace at St.Thégonnec
Detail of the calvary at St.Thégonnec
Reliquary of St.Thégonnec in the ossuary
Typical ossuary beside the church of an unremembered hamlet
Our travels took us around the deserted interior of Brittany with its green hedgerows and quiet country lanes. At Huelgoat however, in the wooded heart of the region, there were many summer visitors wrapped in warm waterproof jackets slithering through the mud along the mossy woodland paths where several of Brittany's renown beauty spots are to be found. Amongst a chaos of huge granite boulders and flowing water known as the Virgin's kitchen pots, we discovered a metal ladder fixed to the rocks and below, once our eyes adjusted to the deep gloom, we found a low, narrow, slippery passage through the rocks to a ledge overlooking a thundering cascade of water known, predictably as the Devil's cauldron. Further along the forested path we heard the haunting sound of flutes and bagpipes as a couple of young men busked beneath the ancient oak trees.

Woodland boulders, Huelgoat
Rocking the logan stone, Huelgoat
We were later than anticipated arriving in Guissény but nobody minded. Joël was not alone and we were overjoyed to discover his son Stephan and daughter-in-law Cathérine, whom we had missed in Thionville when we visited Luxembourg, are here with their children Gwladys and Donatien (typical Breton names). Joël's second son Emanuel was also here to greet us though he currently lives in nearby Lesnevan. He used to visit us in Exeter as a teenager and he and our son Neil have retained a friendship. Danielle's cousin Annie from southern Brittany was also visiting with her husband and grandchildren. There were thirteen of us at supper! We all spent a brilliant evening with happy smiles and laughter, tinged at moments by sadness that Danielle can no longer be a living part of it. How she would have adored her lovely grandchildren.

Donatien
Joël and family
Gwladys helps her mum Cathérine with the washing up
Friday 27th July 2007, Guissény, Brittany
(Guissény has been described in our earlier travels with Modestine. See Tuesday 11th April 2006)

Joël was up before 6am and off with his friend Marcel to check his lobster pots. We were still at breakfast when he returned with a large bucket containing seven spider crabs and several ormers. Ormers are large, rather meaty shell fish that can occasionally be found on the rocky shoreline of Brittany and the Channel Islands. They are becoming increasingly rare. The children were fascinated to see the crabs clambering around in the bucket and Stephan soon had them cooking in a massive saucepan. (Crabs, not children!) He and Joël then disappeared up to the village to give blood at the mobile unit.

The children investigate Joël's catch
Meanwhile, we went for a morning stroll around the familiar granite village and to the churchyard to see the tombstone that has been erected for Danielle since our brief visit last autumn after she died from breast cancer. Guissény church holds so many memories for us and we had mixed emotions there today. It does not yet seem real that we are here, staying in Danielle's home with her husband and sons and playing with her grandchildren, when she is no longer with us. She has been a close friend to Jill since we first met at Champagne-sur-Loue as teenagers. It is good that the Guissény churchyard is right in the heart of the village with friends and family passing nearby every day as they go about their shopping so she is still naturally a part of the community.

Gwladys visits her mamig, Guissény churchyard
Bell tower and calvary at Guissény
Back home Emanuel had arrived for lunch. The plan for the afternoon had been for us all to take out Joël's boat – also named Danielle - for a sail around the little harbour at Le Curnic. However, the wind had risen again during the morning and visibility was not brilliant so the plan was abandoned. Instead Emanuel disappeared into the workshop where he is busy restoring furniture made by his grandfather, Danielle's father, a master joiner from the Jura, ready for his new flat at St. Pol de Léon. Meanwhile Joël trimmed the garden hedges while Jill raked the clippings into piles and Ian and Stephan loaded them into the van and disposed of them at the local tip. We all felt quite relieved when the rain returned in earnest, forcing us to abandon work until tomorrow.

Stephan, Gwladys and Donatien, Guissény
Back indoors we translated the English instructions for replacing the reeds and tuning-in the drones on Joël's Breton bagpipes. Rather surprisingly they are manufactured in Australia! There is presumably a workshop near Alice Springs called Didgeridoos and Breton bagpipes R Us! We now have an in-depth technical vocabulary in both French and Breton concerning the Biniou that is quite probably unique in the English speaking world! Meanwhile the children kept us all entertained and gave us an initiation into grandparenthood. They are incredibly lively and found English nursery rhymes and games such fun they kept us repeating them all afternoon! Gwladys can now chant a couple of phrases that are recognisably English even if she has no idea what they mean.

Late this evening Cathérine's brother, his wife and daughter arrived from Mayenne to spend a week's holiday by the sea. They have brought more rain and wind with them, though they are still hoping to take the boat out tomorrow morning. There are ten of us staying in the house at the moment. So much for our anxiety that we would find Joël lost in such a large house without Danielle when we arrived!

Saturday 28th July 2007, Guissény, Brittany
The wind dropped and the rain disappeared during the night so this morning Stephan and his brother-in-law were up early and had the boat out. Meanwhile, we drove into Lesnevan to buy some champagne for Emanuel to celebrate getting his own flat, some wine for us and some cheap diesel - about 66p per litre - for Modestine before we return home

Emanuel and Jill
At lunchtime the pink, dismembered crabs appeared in a couple of huge bowls on the dinner table. The next couple of hours were spent with metal hooks teasing the crabmeat out from body cavities and from within the joints of the long, spidery legs. There is a surprising amount in your average crab though neither of us really felt it was worth the effort. Bretons are surprised that so little seafood is eaten in England. We were told that English fishermen tend to bring their catches of crabs and lobsters over to Roscoff to sell as there is a more ready market here.

Ellen, Donatien and a plate of crabs
Sociable lunch
Emanuel with Jill and Ian
It took several very sociable hours to finish the various courses of lunch, and the box of assorted cakes we'd purchased in Lesnevan were greeted with enthusiasm over the coffee.

This weekend Guissény is having a celebration of the sea, to raise funds for the Guissény lifeboat down at the little harbour of le Curnic where Joel's fishing boat is moored. This includes blessing the sea, a display of the work of the French National Lifeboat Service, guessing the weight of a huge lobster in a tank, the village children reciting poems in Breton and some anarchic sort of dance that came close to rivalling our experience at the Trinidad Carnival at Couva - but less volubly! During the afternoon everyone except us drove through the village down to the cove to join in the festivities. Having enjoyed both porto and wine at lunch we decided it might be wiser to follow the coastal path on Hinge and Bracket instead. This was a lovely ride of a few kilometres with views out across the estuary of the little river Quillemadec, the white sandy beaches and the islets and rocks just off shore.

Harbour at le Curnic, Guissény
Entertainment or mayhem? Guissény
We reached le Curnic in time to see the sea rescue dogs put through their paces. We've never heard of these before but they are apparently stationed along the Breton coast and provide a valuable service swimming out and towing back to shore small fishing and rowing boats in distress. They are to the French coast what the St. Bernard is to the Alps. They are huge, powerful swimmers working in perfect harmony with their wet-suited owners. Today they were towing back to the jetty boatloads of sea drenched volunteers.

Sea rescue dogs, Guissény
Next we settled to hear an open air concert of sea shanties sung in both Breton and French. Of course almost everyone in the audience was related to somebody in the fishermen's choir so there was considerable cat-calling and joining in with the singing. Around us we heard people speaking Breton and the elderly man next to us told us he used to be a fisherman and his brother was in the choir. He shouted the chorus and waved his arms enthusiastically, jumping up from time to time to dance a few steps with the spontaneous line of dancers that were occupying the central aisle. His accent was almost incomprehensible in French but he proudly told us he spoke some German as during the war he had worked as forced labour for the Germans constructing blockhouses along the Breton coast.

Fishermen's choir, Guissény
Spontaneous Breton dancing, Guissény
Everyone queued for the alfresco supper of spicy mergues sausages served with a tray of chips and a glass of Breton cider. We all sat at communal benches for supper while a band played Celtic folk music and people danced in a circle around the tables.

Almost all Bretons know their traditional dances. They are brought up to it from infancy and if by any chance they slip through the net there are special classes held over the winter months in the village halls. Danielle was not Breton by birth but learned the dances and wore the Breton costume for special ceremonies – such as when the relics of St. Sény are paraded through the streets of the village on his feast day or pardon. On one autumn visit a few years ago we were drummed into attending these classes. It was really an excuse for everyone to gather for some fun, some music and a verre d'amitié but the teacher took it all very seriously. We were the most useless students, except for the village policeman who had recently arrived from elsewhere in France. As we linked little fingers, rolled our arms first clockwise, then anti-clockwise, and shuffled around the room treading on peoples' toes and giggling the policemen commented glumly to us that we were okay as we were going back to England before the next session but his wife had signed him up every Thursday night for the next twelve weeks! Even today we shrank into a corner in case anyone remembered our lessons and dragged us out to join in the circle!

Blue thistles commonly found amongst the dunes, Guissény
Joël's boat moored at le Curnic, Guissény
Monday 30th July 2007, On board the Pont Abbé ferry between Roscoff and Plymouth
We have been having such a grand time in Brittany we forgot about coming home! We arrived at the port late last night to await the ferry departure early this morning, only to find everywhere completely deserted! When we found and checked our ticket it was to discover we'd missed the boat which had left early Sunday, rather than Monday! We felt rather stupid as we settled alone on a vast empty concourse beside the deserted dock to sleep, having decided there wasn't much we could do about it until the morning. We slept really deeply and woke to the sound of the ferry docking as it arrived from Plymouth. The lady from Brittany Ferries at reception was charming, realising immediately that she was dealing with a pair of pensioners who were beginning to lose their marbles. She clicked her mouse a couple of times, charged us 7 euros (£5) and directed us off towards hot showers and coffee!

There was no early ferry this morning so we have had to wait until 4.30pm to finally leave France but it did give us an extra, sunny day around the coast and Roscoff.
The town is famed for its onion sellers who would regularly take the ferry across to England with bicycles loaded with strings of pink onions. How it could have been economically viable is questionable. There is a museum in the town devoted entirely to the Breton onion industry and the lives of the onion sellers. The author Alexander Dumas happened fortuitously to be staying in Roscoff as he reached the letter O while writing his dictionary of French cuisine, so was able to include Ragout d'onions!

Granite church, Roscoff
In the library, Roscoff

Alexander Dumas at Roscoff

Roscoff seen across the harbour
Yesterday it was pouring with rain and we were beginning to tire of playing Incy Wincy Spider with the children so went off for a ride in Modestine along the coast to look at the Abers. These are drowned river valleys stretching well back inland that have become flooded by the sea. Brittany is remarkably like Cornwall and under a wet mizzle it has a definite Celtic charm. There were few people out and all the villages were deserted. Eventually we passed through a village and discovered a queue right down the street waiting to be served at the bakery. In St.Renan we found the remnants of the market being cleared away, the wet stallholders eager to get home for Sunday lunch and to dry out.

We drove down into the city of Brest hoping for some animation on a wet Sunday. It is really a very uninspiring place, just as deserted as the surrounding villages. As a badly bombed naval port during the Second World War it had been entirely rebuilt. It is one of the most ugly, purely functional modern cities we have seen. It parallels Plymouth in many ways, both being destroyed ports and both ending up rebuilt as architectural disasters. Plymouth however, is a far more interesting city and more of the older housing around the centre has been preserved than is the case in Brest. Along the promenade overlooking the commercial port and the citadel there are pleasant public gardens, but the rest of the town is really dismal. Even on a sunny day boredom would rapidly set in.

Town Hall, Brest
A pity dogs cannot read, pavement graffiti, Brest
Rue de Siam, the pulsing heart of Brest
Docks, Brest
Citadel, Brest
On our way back to Guissény, still in the rain, we stopped at the little town of Landernau with its famed mediaeval bridge complete with houses and shops, the river running under low arches beneath the slate hung buildings. In the street crossing the bridge Celtic music was being played on a flute and there was the inevitable line of Breton dancers enjoying an impromptu concert. It was the liveliest place we had found all day.

Mediaeval bridge, Landernau
Next though, we had to hurry back to Guissény for the second day of the fête at le Curnic. This is probably the reason we got confused about our return ferry as we had been excited to hear Joël would be playing the bagpipes at the festival. Would it still take place in the rain? Would we find the beach deserted? As we arrived the rain eased and we were just in time to hear the sound of the Celtic band as it made its way down to the sea, accompanied by dancers in traditional costume.

Breton dancers lead the band, Guissény
The entire village seemed to have turned out again. People were drinking cider, eating Breton pancakes (crêpes) and the mobile canteen was cooking hundreds more sausages and chips. As the band arrived we all gathered around the stage where we were treated to a series of complex dances from ladies wearing lacy caps and men in black waitcoats and wide-brimmed hats. The Guissény band consisted of three sets of bagpipes known as binious and various wheezy clarinet-like instruments called bombardes. The players were smartly dressed in their cream and burgundy tunics and we felt very proud of our friend Joël, seeing him for the first time as he played in public. When we first knew him he was just starting to learn and we also recall him playing for us as we practiced our dance steps around the dining room table with Danielle after our memorable lesson in the village hall.

Breton dances, Guissény
Joël playing the biniou, Guissény
Guissény Celtic band
It was time for us to leave. After hugs, bisous and farewells we left the entire family to enjoy their sausages at the fête and made our way through a sun-drenched countryside along the coast towards Roscoff. After the rain of the day, the sunlight and the sunset were particularly beautiful. It is still clear daylight at 10pm here and we were able to drive over to Morlaix to stroll around the town, admire the impressive viaduct across the river and find somewhere for supper. We returned along the river estuary towards Roscoff where the sun was sinking as a scarlet ball in one direction as the huge, orange harvest moon was rising in another.

Nightfall near Roscoff
Looking out to sea at nightfall, Roscoff
So that's it for now. We are at last heading home after four more months of travel. It's still an amazing and wonderful way to spend retirement and we appreciate how lucky we are. It is good though to know we have a home to come back to and another life beyond Modestine. Things are appreciated more when they are in contrast and after months of coping with the unexpected at almost every turn, it will be good to be back in our own home amongst family and friends for a while. No doubt there will be further travels but just now it will be good not to have our lives disciplined by maintaining this blog!!

Southern Brittany

2007-08-07T09:46:00.000+01:00

Sunday 22nd July 2007, Ancenis, near Nantes, Loire Valley
Having left Pocé with great reluctance this morning we are now making our way along the north bank of the Loire towards Nantes. Since we started our travels back in 2005 we have travelled much of the length of the Loire from its source right down to its estuary. During its travels from the Cevennes to Brittany it has matures from a lively, bubbling stream to a sedate, matronly river flowing lazily between islands and wide sand banks.

The Loire at Montsoreau
Cave dwellings along the Loire
We are making our way towards Guissény to spend a couple of days with our friend Joël before taking the Roscoff ferry home next week. Never having seen Nantes we have decided to spend a night here at Ancenis as a convenient stop for the city. During the evening we took a stroll beside the Loire and around the town. It is pleasant enough but has nothing of outstanding merit as far as we can tell. It is the home town of the 16th century poet Joachim du Bellay, whose works Ian studied at university. (Jill's formative literary experiences in French started, and practically ended, with Les recrées du petit Nicholas and Les aventures de Tintin!) Following temperatures of 30 degrees for most of the day it has now suddenly decided to rain heavily and we have been driven inside for the night.

Joachim du Bellay, Ancenis
Monday 23rd July 2007, La Roche Bernard, Brittany
Just occasionally during this series of travels with Modestine our route has overlapped with the one travelled last year. Today it crossed on a roundabout, entering and leaving by the two opposite roads that we used in April 2006 as we made our way from Brittany to the Loire! The two routes also converged near the entrance to our present campsite which last year we placed very near the top of a rather short list of good sites worth returning to. It is just as good this time and worth the drive from Nantes to find it again.

We will not guide you around the delightful little town of La Roche Bernard on the estuary of the river Vilaine in southern Brittany as we did so during our earlier visit. You can take a tour and see our pictures for 20th April 2006.

It rained very heavily all last night. The couple next to us had arrived on a couple of bicycles with a tiny tent that definitely did not look waterproof. They had eyed Modestine with envy even before the rain and we felt quite guilty being warm and dry this morning. We can just about pick up the BBC news now we are back within range of Britain and we have been horrified to hear of the dreadful flooding and rains in central England. We sincerely hope none of our friends have been afflicted. Attempts to phone Neil and Jeev have proved impossible but we picked up an email saying the landline isn't functioning because of the floods.

Partly because of the rain we decided to drive into Nantes rather than walking to the station at Ancenis and returning to the same campsite after a day around the city. We are glad we did. Parking was straightforward and eventually we found out how and where to catch the tramway into the city centre – except that it wasn't running because of road works but a relief bus took us in instead.

Almost the only thing we knew about Nantes until today is that there was an edict here in 1598 signed by Henri IV in an attempt to resolve the religious problems between the French Catholics and the Huguenots. Unfortunately it did not succeed as it was later revoked. We are now very slightly wiser about other aspects of the history of both Brittany and Nantes.

French history of the 15th and 16th centuries is very complex with various dukedoms existing in parallel with the French monarchy. In Brittany the region was ruled first by François II and then by his daughter Anne de Bretagne, from the castle in Nantes.

Nantes is regarded as the capital of Brittany, an honour it has sometimes shared with Rennes. It lies on the estuary of the Loire and since the river has silted up, making it too shallow for shipping, it is served by the naval port of St. Nazaire.

The city was badly damaged in the Second World War and has been largely rebuilt, generally quite sympathetically. The old town around the Eglise Sainte Croix is still full of narrow streets with crumbling tenements and warehouses. Nearby is the late gothic Cathedral which internally is very imposing. Begun in 1434, high columns give an impression of great height as they soar, without capitals, straight up to the roof. To one side lies the beautiful marble tomb of François II and Marguerite de Foix commissioned by their daughter Anne de Bretagne in 1502. Marble figures representing various virtues stand at each corner. On the far side of the Cathedral is a 19th century monument to General Lamoricière surrounded by bronze allegorical figures. A modern bronze statue of Anne de Bretagne stands at the entrance to her magnificently restored and picturesque castle surrounded by a moat and pretty gardens. We crossed the courtyards and spent time between the bouts of rain exploring the ramparts which gave us a good impression of the city. From here we wondered about a curious building which turned out to have been a 19th century biscuit factory called LU producing the chocolate coated biscuits known as Petit Ecolier. Ian has always been addicted to them so was quite delighted to discover their origine. Today the factory has moved elsewhere and the original building is a cultural centre. LU now stands for Lieu Unique!

Eglise Sainte Croix, Nantes
Cathedral, Nantes
Tomb of François II and Marguerite de Foix , Nantes Cathedral
Anne de Bretagne, Nantes
Cathedral seen from the castle ramparts, Nantes
Castle walls and moat, Nantes
Castle courtyard, Nantes
Former LU biscuit factory, Nantes
Across the main thoroughfare is the "modern" part of the town full of 18th and 19th century houses, commercial buildings, an impressive theatre and an attractive square – Place Royale - reconstructed after the war, with a fountain symbolising Nantes and its maritime history in the centre. We thought it was in process of restoration but apparently the scaffolding is some sort of art installation and people were queuing to climb up onto the platform constructed around the fountain to see the interior of a temporary hotel room and the top half of the fountain! It all seemed a bit weird and we couldn't be bothered to queue in the rain so instead went off to explore the delightful Pommeraye arcade built in 1843.

Art installation, Place Royale, Nantes
Arcade de Pommeraye, Nantes
The public library was closed but outside someone had scrawled a grammatically incorrect graffiti message – "Culture is expensive, try ignorance." Speaks for itself dunnit?

Question - Who needs libraries? Answer – French grafitti writers, Nantes
We walked down to the banks of the river by which time the rain had started again in earnest so we gave up on the botanical gardens and, pausing only for Jill to fall over on a slippery wet grating, bruise her posterior and get hauled back onto her feet by a gallant Breton, we made our way back to Modestine.

In the past we have seen Nantes in the distance as we have skirted it in various travels around Loire Atlantique. Big cities are never easy to absorb and getting to their centre always takes planning. Certainly one wet day in Nantes was insufficient to get more than an impression. It is a pleasant city with a canalised river, the Erdre, running into the Loire. Boat trips and water buses take passengers through the city as well as the buses and trams. There are literary connections with Jules Verne who came from Nantes, and Alphonse Daudet, who set scenes from his novels in the city.

We left Nantes along a very wet and congested motorway. Progress was slow and unpleasant until we eventually left it and followed departmental roads across country, through a large area of marshland from where salt used to be extracted. By early evening we reached La Roche Bernard to discover we were still in the campsite database from our last visit so all formalities were dispensed with. Later, the rain having been chased away at last by the sunshine, we ate a hot supper outside cooked in our tiny portable oven. An Englishman can to chat, telling us he now lived in France and had come here for his holidays. He sold up in Bedfordshire and bought a canal boat, moored near Calais, and a camping car. They live on the boat and travel around in the camper. They are sixty-eight and love every second of their new lives. They say they don't speak much French but would never dream of going back to England. We wonder if they will feel the same ten years from now!

Tuesday 24th July 2007, Pont Aven, Brittany
We have to say that last night we did not sleep well and last year's impression of the campsite at La Roche-Bernard has taken a knock. It is not really the fault of the campsite but we were permanently disturbed during the night by the hum of mosquitoes around our ears. How they managed to get through the insect screen we do not know. Ian lashed around with a fly swat, zapped a few and banged himself painfully on the nose, and we went back to sleep. This became a regular pattern throughout the night until we fell into an exhausted doze around 6am. At 7am the municipal lorry arrived to collect the bottles for recycling. We had inadvertently parked just on the other side of the hedge! Deciding we might as well count out any further chance of sleep Jill went off to the shower and slipped on the soapy remains left by the previous user! Not only did I land right on the same bruise as the one I got in Nantes yesterday, I managed to bruise my back on the glass shower screen as I fell! Feeling shocked and miserable I sat in the shower tray under the jet of tepid water and cried! I seem to have fallen, twisted ankles, stubbed toes and generally suffered personal physical damage so many times in France it seemed like the last straw!

Crying is a bit pointless when there is nobody around to sympathise. Dry and dressed back at Modestine, Ian administered the necessary sympathy together with a cup of tea and breakfast. My multiple bruises are starting to turn pretty colours and if they are really spectacular my posterior may even appear on the blog in a day or two as a modern work of art!

Candidate for the Turner Prize? School of Hard Knocks. Large research grant and eager models required to develop this new genre of human art.
Looking at our road map there are not that many places of note we have not already visited along the coast of Southern Brittany. Lorient was an obvious exception but as 85% of the town was destroyed during the war and it has since been almost entirely rebuilt we did not think we would find much to interest us. Instead we followed minor roads around the Golfe du Morbihan and stopped at Port Louis, just across the water from Lorient. The little town was renamed after Louis XIII when it became a commercial port, established by Richlieu who set up the India Company there, to trade with the far East and bring spices back to Europe. It was not completely successful and was later re-established across the estuary at Lorient – hence the name. From then on Port Louis declined. Today it is an attractive little granite town with an economy based on tourism as well as tuna fishing. During the Second World War its 17th century fort was occupied by the Germans and across the sea at Lorient they constructed a large submarine base for their U-boats. There are several monuments in Port Louis in memory of its residents who were either shot or deported by the Nazis.

Entrance to the fort of Port Louis
View towards Lorient from the ramparts of Port Louis
German submarine base, Lorient
In memory of residents killed by the Nazis, Port Louis
A more happy aspect of Port Louis
We walked around the impressive granite ramparts in the hot afternoon sun before exploring the port and wandering through the streets of the town where an evening market was being set up. From the bakers we shared a piece of far Breton – a cholesterol laden batter pudding loaded with prunes and sugar - enjoying the nostalgic taste of Brittany.

Eventually we made our way back along the coastal footpath to Modestine and continued on to Lorient. As we expected, it is a large modern town. It looked clean but unremarkable as we drove through and we did not stop. The roads are busier in southern Brittany than anywhere else we have been in France but this is probably because we are now in the middle of French school holidays. Just outside of Lorient we passed through the seaside resort of Guidel-Plages. It was chaotic! Nose to tail traffic crawled slowly along the seafront and there was not a parking space anywhere. Campsites all along the coast are mainly full and quite expensive. We continued towards Pont Aven, a pretty fishing town famed as the home of the expressionist painter Paul Gauguin. Just before we reached the town we found a campsite that seems quite pleasant in the usual eccentric way of French campsites and are happily settled for the night. It has unisex showers, wash basins and toilets – including urinals surrounded by mirrors but no doors! It is nearly 16 euros for the night, rather than the 10 we paid last night.

Wednesday 25th July 2007, Châteauneuf-du-Faou, Brittany
This series of travels is fast drawing to an end and this may well be the last night we camp as tomorrow evening we will be with Joël in Guissény until we return to England.

We left the campsite, which apart from the really inhibiting and strange sanitaires, was fine, and drove down to Pont Aven on the estuary of the river Aven. It is to Brittany what Newlyn is to Cornwall. It was a magnet for artists in the 19th century, the Pont Aven school making great use of vivid colour, influenced primarily by Paul Gaugin whose works include not only local scenes from southern Brittany, but vividly coloured scenes painted in Polynesia where he later travelled and died.

The town is really pretty and therefore an obvious Mecca of tourism. We were there quite early, even finding time for a stroll through the lovely Bois d'Amour beside the river and the old mill featured by Gaugin in his paintings. In the town we browsed the little shops selling very attractive Breton souvenirs including cider, biscuits, Quimper pottery and butter cakes. We felt very contented as we enjoyed coffee in the sunshine and listened to the many different languages being spoken around us – Italian, Dutch, German and English as well as French.

Scene beside the river Aven painted by Paul Gaugin
Mill painted by Gaugin, Pont Aven
Town of Pont Aven
Public toilets, Breton style, overhanging the river at Pont Aven
We continued around the coast to Concarneau with its fortified old town on an island in the middle of the harbour. There are several magnificently engineered fortifications along the coast of Brittany, apart from Concarneau and Port Louis there is of course the classic fortified town of St. Malo.

Ville Close, Concarneau
National marine research laboratory, Concarneau
Most of the rest of the day has been spent around Concarneau, a lovely town with sailing and fishing boats crowding the harbour, and the narrow streets of the fortified Ville Close, devoid of traffic, thronging with tourists, restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, museums and even an open air theatre and a small park. We climbed onto the walls of the fortification with its high granite crenelations defending it on one side, and nothing on the other! It was quite unnerving at times to see an unfenced drop down into the streets or the waters of the harbour. Below, just inside the main entrance, musicians were entertaining visitors with traditional Breton music, using bagpipes and flutes.

Inside the fortified walls of the Ville Close, Concarneau
Walls of the Ville Close, Concarneau
Musicians entertain the holiday makers, Concarneau
Our travels continued to the small town of Rosporden. Our son Neil once went on a school exchange here and we subsequently visited his hosts and spent a night in the town. We recognised very little and could not recall at all where we had stayed. It seemed rather a quite little place though the church, reflected in the lake was most attractive.

Church at Rosporden
English friends of Ian's moved to Brittany some ten years ago and set up a business running holiday workshops in patchwork and quilting in the Montagnes Noires of Finistère. We have called on then several times over the years as we have passed by. We have recently been trying to phone them without success so called by this evening unannounced. We were shocked to discover the house deserted and up for sale, the garden looking sadly overgrown and abandoned. According to the lady in the village library one of our friends has died and the other returned to England. As we have been travelling for much of the past two years we have not always been able to stay in regular contact with people so this has come as a complete shock to us. It also underlines what we have always said about English couples who move to live abroad. It is fine until one is ill or dies. In this case it is particularly difficult. We know our remaining friend does not have family in England and as it is obviously proving difficult to sell the house, money is tied up in France rather than being available as capital to buy anywhere back home. Tomorrow we hope to contact the notaire responsible for the sale of the house to ask if he can put us in contact with our friend as we have no other way of finding him.

Empty and overgrown, the end of a happy dream
Because his office is in the vicinity we have decided to find a campsite nearby. The rain has returned and we are on a sadly bedraggled site in the deserted heart of inland Brittany as the rain patters ceaselessly on the roof. We have watched a video, eaten everything left in the fridge and as it is now black and muddy outside we may as well retire to bed for the night.

Loire

2007-08-03T13:40:00.001+01:00

Monday 16th July 2007, Pocé, Near Amboise, Loire Valley
Ian and Jill left Caen during the morning leaving Geneviève to travel separately with her mother Germaine to meet up in the evening at Germaine's holiday house here on the Loire. The drive was not particularly pleasant, passing through countless little grey towns where speed limits were frequently reduced to twenty miles an hour, reinforced by road bumps – intentional and otherwise, and traffic lights that seemed permanently set to red. We stopped for lunch and fuel in Argentan and shortly afterwards the storms started adding to the difficulty of our drive. There was nowhere to pull off and the country roads were awash with water with visibility reduced by the slashing rain and blackened skies. We were lucky it seems. Despite thunder and lightning we were okay but overhead wires were hit on the railway knocking out the electricity and leaving passengers stranded overnight in the TGV from Rennes to Paris!

We eventually arrived at Pocé around 6pm to find our hosts had taken the motorway from Le Mans and had been here for a couple of hours, having left after us! Supper was already waiting and after exploring the house with enthusiasm and delight we sat around the table with glasses of wine. As the rain continued falling outside we felt very snug.

Tuesday 17th July 2007, Pocé-sur-Cisse, Near Amboise, Loire Valley
Today, by contrast to yesterday, the sun is out and it is a beautiful day. We have discovered that the house is large and rambling with a sunny enclosed garden behind and steps leading up into cool woodland. Across the road in front, but belonging to the property, lie a neglected rose garden and an overgrown vegetable patch leading down to a tiny river where the children all used to spend hours fishing and never caught anything. The domain is far too large to maintain but this morning Ian is out in the garden with a scythe trying to restore the lawn in time for lunch. The tools are all old with worm eaten handles. Along with the garden furniture they are stored in a couple of troglodyte caves cut into the cliff face in the garden. When we opened the old wooden door the cave was cool and dry without any of the spiders' webs one might expect. This we quickly discovered is because there are several lively bats flying around inside! They seemed happy enough to skim around us as we sorted through the tools.

The house has belonged to the family since 1973 and is full of happy memories for them. Group family holidays were spent here with the children of both Yves and Geneviève, but as they have grown up and life has moved on it is visited less frequently. Germaine does not wish to be here alone without transport as there is nothing but a baker's shop in the village, so our desire to see the house we have heard so much about has been a good excuse for a shared visit. We will stay for a few days before moving on and next week Chantal will arrive to spend the school holidays here with her two girls. The house stands on the edge of the village near the privately owned château de Pocé where the grounds are open to the public without charge.

Wednesday 18th July 2007, Pocé, Near Amboise, Loire Valley
Much of yesterday was spent clearing the flower borders, hacking back the grass and scraping up the accumulation of moss. The garden is now quite transformed and we have been eating meals outside under the shade of a parasol as we admire our hard work and look at the grapes ripening on the vine that stretches along the old stone wall. This could be paradise! We are not the only British to think so. Just half a mile down the road there is a Rolling Stone who employs the village gardener and definitely does not suffer from moss in his lawn! If Mick Jagger can find satisfaction in Pocé, so too can we! He has apparently owned a château here for twenty five years and is well known in the village. This is a different château from the one mentioned above and Germaine has agreed to show us the entrance gate. It is apparently well hidden.

Ian at work, Pocé-sur-Cissé
Jill not at work, Pocé-sur-Cissé
After lunch, Pocé-sur-Cissé
Garden wall with vine, Pocé-sur-Cissé
Apart from Sir Mick, the only other curiosity about Pocé is that it is the place where Viagra is manufactured! "Château Viagra" is almost certainly the ugliest château to be found on the Loire but it does offer employment to almost everyone in the village - except the gardener who is busy gathering moss for a Rolling Stone! Tentative discussions about a twinning link between Pocé and Pisa have so far come to nothing but if the tower inclines further it could provide a last ditch solution. The product is produced by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the factory is known locally as the Pfizeria!

Château Viagra, Pocé-sur-Cissé
Yesterday afternoon we left Germaine reading the newspaper and drove along the banks of the Loire to the Château de Chaumont. We parked beside the river which after the rains is in full flood, swirling around, and frequently submerging, the little sandy islands that are scattered along its length. Generally at this time of year there are sandy beaches and swimming spots all along the banks and the many campsites and hotels are packed. We found we could park anywhere and the campsites looked almost empty.

Château de Chaumont seen from the Loire
We walked up through the park to the château with its creamy stone walls and high pointed slate roofs. Inside we found a wide stone courtyard with lovely views of the wide valley of the Loire. On the wall was a carved porcupine, the symbol of Louis XII. It was to be seen again as a theme throughout the château, carved over fireplaces and doorways. There was much restoration work going on but we were free to wander the rooms at leisure and wonder at the luxurious lifestyle that must have been lived there. It had been greatly changed of course over the generations of ownership. Our ticket also gave access to the 19th century stables. Life looked pretty luxurious too for the horses, and the hunting and riding equipment, along with the collection of different carriages, were a reflection of the wealth of the owners.

Gatehouse, Château de Chaumont
Château de Chaumont
Courtyard, Château de Chaumont
Symbol of Louis XII, Château de Chaumont
Château de Chaumont seen from the courtyard
Goldilocks was here, Château de Chaumont
Window in the chapel depicting Thomas Becket with Henry II, Château de Chaumont
Stables, Château de Chaumont
We drove back along the opposite bank of the Loire, stopping for a stroll around Amboise on the way. Here the picturesque streets, huddled beneath the heavy defensive walls of the château, were crowded with visitors. Situated on top of the castle wall, very much in contrast, stood the delicate chapel dedicated to St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters. We did not spend long in Amboise. We have seen it before many years ago but it would be nice during a future visit to explore it in more detail. We would also particularly like to see the nearby home of Leonardo da Vinci at Clos Lucé.

Château at Amboise
St. Hubert's chapel, Amboise
Loire in full spate, Amboise
This morning we left Germaine to walk down to the village for some postcards and to chat with her neighbour. We drove off after breakfast along the bank of the Loire, passing Blois, to the château of Chambord which none of us have ever visited before. It is one of the largest and most magnificent of the Loire châteaux and was started in 1519 by François I, successor to Louis XII whose château we visited yesterday. François constructed Chambord within a huge parkland, surrounding it with a wide moat. The building is heavily influenced by the Italian style of architecture and is typical of the splendour of the French Renaissance. It has an overall symmetry, with four linked towers forming a square around a central staircase constructed as a double helix. It is actually two circular staircases superimposed upon each other. Up at roof level fantasy takes over with belfries, towers and turrets that are never quite symmetrical. It is claimed that in silhouette it has the appearance of a mediaeval city. François I had as his symbol a salamander, believed to be capable of living through fire. It was to be seen throughout the castle, carved into the stonework.

Château de Chambord
Château de Chambord
Courtyard, Château de Chambord
Château de Chambord
Central staircase, Château de Chambord
At a window on the famous staircase, Château de Chambord
Top of the staircase tower, Château de Chambord
View from the roof, Château de Chambord
Rooftop, Château de Chambord
Chapel seen from the castle roof, Château de Chambord
Salamander, symbol of François I, Château de Chambord
There was much to see, many of the rooms were furnished and our visit took most of the day. There was also a curious exhibition "Made in Chambord" illustrating the use made commercially of the name Chambord to identify, particularly in America, with quality and beauty. Branded products ranged from ships, cars, kitchen cabinets and armchairs to restaurants, perfumes, coffee percolators, bedspreads, spirits and even a coffin!

Interior, Château de Chambord
In the 19th century, after the Revolution and the end of the Empire, Henri Duc de Chambord and last of the Bourbons was in direct line to the throne of France. It was accepted that the monarchy should return under the tricolour flag of the people of France. In 1871 carriages were made to carry the new monarch Henri V into Paris. But it was not to be. Henri refused to accept the monarchy under the French flag, insisting on a return to the white flag of the Bourbons. His intractability cost him his kingdom and he left for a life of exile, the Third Republic was declared and the new carriages mouldered at Chambord where they are currently being restored.

Ian stages a coup to restore the monarchy, Château de Chambord
We were all weary after a day on our feet and poor Geneviève was exhausted with trying to explain the intricacies of French history to us. So after a brief rest we took a refreshing stroll through the surrounding formal gardens and looked at the stables and the little parish church. We had already wondered about the shrapnel marks scarring the beautiful white stone walls of the château. In the chapel we found a plaque commemorating the bravery of the priest who, during heavy fighting here in August 1944 as the Allies advanced through France, had interceded on behalf of hostages held by the Germans, saving not only their lives, but also preventing the destruction of many of the treasures from the Louvre which had been moved to Chambord for safe keeping during the war.

We sought out a different route for our return journey home, following the opposite bank through the sunny, green countryside of the Loire Valley. Near Amboise we stopped to investigate a wine cellar built into the cliffs. Inside it was dark and very cool. We were offered tastings of several Touraine wines to make our selection of a suitable gift for our hosts. For once Jill wasn't driving so could thoroughly enjoy the experience. During the conversation we were rather disappointed to hear that rumour is rife amongst the local businesses supplying his château, that Mick Jagger is actually selling up in Pocé! It seems that after all he "can't get no satisfaction" even in this tranquil corner of France!
In the wine cave near Amboise

Thursday 19th July 2007, Pocé, Near Amboise, Loire Valley
Today has been one of the laziest we have spent while travelling. This morning Ian pottered in the garden, Germaine did the crossword, Geneviève read her crime thriller and Jill prepared the blog, enjoying having a cool house and space to work. At lunch time we walked down to the village through the grounds of the château for yet another lunch to celebrate Geneviève's retirement and us all being together at Pocé after so many years dreaming of it.

Lunch was in a troglodyte restaurant inside the white chalk cliffs. While the sun was glaring and hot outside, we sat in cool comfort at pretty tables with flowers, deep within a cave! Any similarity with our stone-age ancestors ended there. The cave was well lit with electricity and the Flintstones surely never enjoyed chilled kir aperitifs as they waited to be served with pâté maison or saumon fumé served with prawns and salad. To follow we variously selected duck, steak or trout with gratin dauphinois and fresh vegetables accompanied by a bottle of the local Touraine wine. French menus always have at least four courses so next we struggled manfully through plates of cheeses and salad. Just as we thought it was all over Mme Flintstone exited from the adjacent kitchen cave carrying dishes of nouvelle cuisine chocolate gateau decorated with melon, grapes and crème anglaise. As we staggered back into the glaring sunshine we positively ached with over indulging! We just hope Geneviève doesn't continue celebrating her retirement indefinitely!

Celebrating inside a cave, Pocé
Edible art, Pocé
Germaine, at eighty-six is amazing. Not only did she cope very elegantly with lunch, she strode ahead of us back through the village, and deciding we now needed a good walk, she lead us to the entrance to Château Jagger. There was little to see from the gate. It looks very unassuming and masked by trees. The photos we have seen from the air however show it to be quite splendid.

An inauspicious entrance gate, Pocé
Along footpaths, through woodland, across exposed grassy meadows, Germaine lead us on a relentless ramble. She does not get to visit Pocé very often and she was revelling in showing us around. The sun was as bright as she was and we were all feeling uncomfortably hot. Eventually we reached home and with one accord, we disappeared to our cool bedrooms and fell asleep for two hours despite feeling uncomfortably tight around the middle!

One of several châteaux in the village, Pocé
We were roused from our slumbers by a neighbour turning up to show us her latest grandchild who sat grinning at us from his push chair as we drank tea in a patch of shade in the garden. As the day turned cooler Ian returned to his gardening and Jill and Geneviève went off for yet another walk through the surrounding countryside.

Reflections on the river Ramberge at the end of the garden, Pocé
A refreshing paddle in the Ramberge, Pocé
Friday 20th July 2007, Pocé, Near Amboise, Loire Valley
We went our own way today, leaving Geneviève and Germaine to visit an elderly relative in a nursing home nearby before Germaine caught the evening train back to Caen. Meanwhile we spent the morning in Amboise, mainly at a cybercafé sorting out emails, blogs and internet banking.

We turned up at lunchtime at the home of Susan and Ray whom we first met in the Languedoc when we were staying at Ambre-les-Espagnolettes. They moved to the Loire last year and shortly afterwards recognised Modestine parked in the centre of Loches during several days of very heavy rain. On that occasion they made us welcome to their home and offered us accommodation for the night. Since then we have stayed in touch and as Pocé is not far from their village we have spent a very happy day together in their garden, eating slightly singed barbequed chicken and mirabelle crumble. Their garden is loaded with more fruit trees than they know what to do with so when we left it was with a box full of fresh mirabelles. Later we strolled around the village of sunny, white stone houses, surely a candidate for one of France's most beautiful villages, where every corner of the streets and gardens are filled with roses, dahlias, hollyhocks and various flowering shrubs. It was good to see their home now they have had time to settle. They have certainly found themselves a very enviable location and have begun to make friends locally and join in various activities.

With Susan Ray and Muffin, Chédingy
It was already 7pm when we returned to Pocé to find Genevieve reading an article in Le Monde about the spiralling number of British buying second homes in France or moving here permanently. There are particular areas that they choose, mainly towards the west. Fortunately for us they have yet to discover the Jura, which will always have a very special place in our affections.

We would be hard pressed to find an area of France to put down roots. Each region has its own attractions and charms. That is what makes the country so special. We have rosy memories of Nancy, the vineyards of Champagne and the Meuse. Just at the moment we really do no want to leave the Loire. Last week we were singing the praises of Calvados and before that we were captivated by the Cotentin. Next week we will be in Brittany with our friends there and we will most definitely not wish to leave to return to England. We are already planning our return to France to areas as diverse as Bordeaux, the Jura and the Languedoc, each so very different yet quite irresistible, full of happy memories and friends we have made over the years.

Apart from having financial capital tied up in a property, buying commits you to one region. It seems better perhaps to rent in different regions for several months at a time, exploring the surroundings in depth. Modestine has been a joy to us since we retired and we hope we will continue to have happy travels together long into the future. It would be unrealistic though to continue living in such a tiny vehicle for long periods in all weathers, and travelling permanently can be very exhausting, as well as addictive. We would not have missed anything (except the trouble with our bank card) as we travelled through nine or ten countries over the past four months, but it has been wonderful recently to have Geneviève as a base to return to while we have been back in France. There is a lot to be said for a clean bathroom, a roof when it is raining, a washing machine, a table to leave the computer on for days on end, internet access from the next room, a telephone, a garage to dump our bikes in, and the conviviality of friends around a table with a bottle of wine by candlelight. It would be so nice too to be sufficiently long in a location to return the boundless hospitality so readily offered by all our fantastic friends across Europe. We are very aware of just how fortunate we have been over the past couple of years.

Saturday 21st July 2007, Pocé, Near Amboise, Loire Valley
Today has been our last full day together here and the sun has continued to shine for us. This morning the three of us drove into Amboise to invade the cybercafé and sort through emails before settling at a sunny table overlooked by the castle walls for croissants and a jug of coffee. Nearby, in a little street lined with boutiques, coffee shops and charcuteries, we could hear the authentic, brilliant playing of a couple of itinerant Hungarian gypsies with a violin and an accordion.

Ian and Geneviève in Amboise
Hungarian gypsy music, Amboise
We drove out of Amboise, intending to stop for a picnic lunch at the curious Chinese pagoda of Chanteloup overlooking the valley of the Loire just outside Amboise. However, as that and the grounds is all that remains of the original château we thought the admission charge disproportionately high so continued to Chenonceau on the river Cher for our picnic. Entry here was hardly any more expensive and there was so much to see we were there the entire afternoon. It was inevitably crowded inside the château but with an excellent printed leaflet to guide us round we could move through the château at our own pace.

Sneaky picture from the gate, Pagoda de Chanteloup
Chenonceau is one of the most well known and most beautiful of the châteaux. It is built in the river Cher linked to either bank by a delicate arched bridge. It is a very feminine castle and has generally belonged to women throughout its history. The 16th century château was given to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, by King Henri II. Many years his senior she retained her charms and influence over him until his accidental death in a tournament. His vengeful Queen, Cathérine de Medici, ordered Diane de Poitiers to leave her beloved home and she in turn then continued to develop Chenonceau. In particular she developed the grounds and setting up a beautiful garden on a raised terrace beside the house to protect it from possible flooding of the Cher and also built the galleries on top of the bridge. Since then Chenonceau has belonged to various women, notably Mme. Dupin, grandmother by marriage to the writer George Sand. It is due to her lifestyle and generosity towards her staff and tenants that Chenonceau was spared from the excesses of the French Revolution.

Château de Chenonceau
Château de Chenonceau
Château de Chenonceau, west side, spanning the Cher
Château de Chenonceau, east side, spanning the Cher,
During the First World War the castle was used as a hospital while during the Second it found itself situated literally on the demarcation line between the free and occupied zones of France. Its main hall, constructed across the river Cher, provided a useful way of smuggling people across from one zone to the other.

Main gallery built on the bridge that crosses the Cher, Château de Chenonceau
The surrounding formal gardens are a joy to walk through while the interior of the house is furnished with tapestries, beds, upholstered chairs, cupboards, chests, paintings, carvings and ornaments. They are not all contemporary and few originate from the château but generally the fireplaces and ceilings of the rooms have been preserved despite considerable restoration during the 19th century. On the lower floor, level with the river in which it stands, are the kitchens, furnished with mainly 19th century copper pans, meat hooks, cake moulds and cutlery.

Garden of Diane de Poitiers, Château de Chenonceau
Garden of Cathérine de Medici and the Château de Chenonceau
Château de Chenonceau seen from the garden of Garden of Cathérine de Medici
François I bedroom, Château de Chenonceau
Louis XIV bedroom, Château de Chenonceau
Louise of Lorraine's bedroom, Château de Chenonceau
Kitchens, Château de Chenonceau
Kitchens, Château de Chenonceau Kitchens, Château de Chenonceau
We spent far longer than expected looking around the castle and the grounds. On our way back to the car we discovered a 17th century restored farm complex and a huge fruit and vegetable garden. This was surrounded by walls and laid out very formally with low espalier apple trees lining the paths, pergolas hung with gourds, melons and pumpkins, individual beds of dahlias, marigolds, antirrhinums and sunflowers, with masses of sweet smelling roses in full bloom. Nearby we also discovered a formal maze laid out according to an Italian plan of 1720 and formed from two thousand yew trees. It wasn't very effective as a maze as we discovered the quickest way to the far side was to walk through it rather than round it but it was great fun for all the children.

17th century farm with vegetable garden, Chenonceau
Maze, Château de Chenonceau
We returned to Pocé through spattering rain beneath threatening skies. Nothing daunted we lit the barbeque in the garden under the roof protecting the entrance to the caves. We spent a very cheerful evening annoying the bats with the smell of sizzling meat until the rain eased and it was dark enough for them to come out and flutter around our heads as they skimmed the garden enjoying their own supper.

Calvados

2007-07-27T14:40:00.000+01:00

Thursday 12th July 2006, Caen
We are back with Geneviève again with a roof over our heads for a night or two.

An exceptionally handsome manhole cover! Domfront
This morning we walked into Domfront which is a pretty little mediaeval town built on the summit of a hill and dominated by the ruins of an old castle destroyed in 1608 on the orders of Sully. It has since become a romantic ruin set in a peaceful park filled with flowers. From the ramparts there are extensive views over the surrounding countryside. The main street is filled with terraces of cottages in granite and schist interspersed with other, wooden framed, pain-de-bois properties. Behind the façade are several little courtyards surrounded by more imposing residences.

Castle ruins, Domfront
Main square showing the town hall, Domfront
Typical street, Domfront
Hidden courtyard in the heart of the town, Domfront
Completely out of keeping, right in the very centre of the town stands France's first reinforced concrete church constructed in1929 to replace one which was smaller, and most probably far more beautiful. The spire was swathed in green netting and when we tried to look inside the church we found a notice stating that it was closed on grounds of security. We later saw the headlines for the newspaper Ouest France and it seems the iron bars within the cement are corroding and the building is unsafe!

Decaying 20th century church, Domfront
We drove on to the spa town of Bagnoles-de-l'Orne, the only spa in this part of France. It is a very pretty little town filled with smart hotels, beautiful, flower-filled parks, a lake, a chateau, a woodland walk to a viewpoint overlooking the river valley, and of course the spa itself. It is reputed to be good for rheumatic problems. It all seemed very quiet however and the busiest place at lunchtime was the spa restaurant which was packed full with people who looked as if they had seen younger and healthier days. Bagnole in French is a term applied to an old, clapped-out car. The spa is there to deal with old, clapped out humans.

Lakeside hotel, Bagnoles-de-l'Orne
Casino, Bagnoles-de-l'Orne
Spa complex, Bagnoles-de-l'Orne
Chateau, now council offices, Bagnoles-de-l'Orne
Legend has it that the spa was discovered when the king and his horse had both grown old together. Rather than have his horse destroyed, the king turned it loose in a deep, wooded valley to fend for itself. Imagine his surprise when it returned to its stable a few days later as young and fit as it had been at the start of their adventures together! The king investigated the valley, found the spring and was soon as rejuvenated as his horse! Word of the miracle spread and the king established the spa so everyone could benefit from its health-giving properties. We drank some of the water but cannot say it has rejuvenated us quite yet.

On the outskirts of the nearby town of La Ferté-Macé we stopped for a very nice hot lunch at the Leclerc supermarket. Their restaurants are excellent value and make a convenient change when camping. Apart from another rather strange, modern church in the town centre we found little to detain us in the town so continued to Carrouges. Here we discovered a beautiful stone and brick castle with a wonderful cruet-set gatehouse with its two, round, pepperpot towers with their high slate roofs. The castle is set within a moat and has pretty, if rather overgrown, formal gardens. The castle courtyard and several ground floor rooms could be freely explored but the interior of most of the castle was only accessible as a guided tour which we had missed. Instead we explored the rose gardens and fed our stale bread to the truly enormous fish swimming in the moat.

Gatehouse, Carrouges
Chateau, Carrouges
Gardens, Carrouges
We'd rung Geneviève earlier to ask if it would be okay to return today as we were not far away. So from Carrouges we headed towards Caen, stopping on the way to visit the ramparts and courtyard of the castle at Falaise where William the Conqueror was born. There is a flamboyant equestrian statue of him in the main town square, just in front of the castle. He was known in France as William the Bastard. His father living in the castle looked down to the river flowing below the battlements and fell in love with a young girl washing linen in the river. He sent for her to live at the castle and she became the mother of the future king of England in 1027. Falaise seemed a busy and interesting town but as it was nearly 7pm we needed to hasten our way towards Caen.

William the Conqueror, Falaise
Chateau where William the Conqueror was born, Falaise
When we arrived we were greeted eagerly by the neighbour's cat Confetti who seemed rather pleased to see us back. Geneviève says she has had to lock our bedroom door as he has been very determined in trying to keep our bed warm while we have been gone. This evening he seemed equally determined to become a camping cat and take up residence in Modestine.

Saturday 14th July 2006, Caen
Yesterday was Ian's birthday and the sun shone all day. Ian celebrated it by losing a filling and paying an emergency visit to Geneviève's dentist who was available at short notice, carried out the repair and charged a mere 29 euros (£20), which is almost certainly less than he would have paid back in England.

We were sent down to the Friday market to browse the food and vegetable stalls, returning with a basket filled with tomatoes, fresh parsley, peppers, courgettes and a selection of Normandy cheeses for a supper party. We felt very much in holiday mood as we enjoyed a beer on a nearby terrace watching the market activities.

Ian in birthday mood, Caen
View of l'Abbé aux Hommes, where William the Conqueror is buried, seen from the market place, Caen
As we returned home we called off to visit our late friend Alain, Geneviève's husband, who lies in the cemetery near the house. He was also a specialist librarian – responsible for the local history collections of the Départment of Calvados, Ian being his counterpart in Devon. Alain was responsible for several noted works on the history of the book in Normandy. Ian and Alain worked together on an exhibition of Napoleonic caricatures which was shown in Caen in 1985. Had he still been alive it is very likely they would have collaborated together on a publication in their retirement. Their friendship has enriched the lives of both their families and we have been visiting each other's homes for over 20 years, enabling our children to have an early understanding into each other's language and culture.

Alain Girard, still in our thoughts, Caen
During the evening we spoke to Neil and Jeev, and Ian was overjoyed to hear over the telephone a recording of the heartbeat of our future grandchild. It was a very moving experience and amazing to receive such a birthday present from a baby yet to be born!

We ate a celebratory supper outside in the warmth of the evening. It is well after 10pm before darkness falls here. During the night the rain returned.

Today, Saturday, is Bastille day and we are here in Caen to celebrate with fireworks tonight. The local marches and military parades that have always been part of the French way of celebrating Bastille Day have been extended, since the election of Nicholas Sarkozi, with a huge display of European power in Paris. All the countries of the EU have sent troops, armed to the teeth with guns, swords and bayonets. On the television all of France watches as they march in perfect formation past Sarkozi who is standing, taking the salute with tear-filled eyes and a trembling lip. His power as the new president of France has been demonstrated in this massive spectacle. It has been rather a shock to watch it! It's the nearest we've seen to the parades of Russia and the Eastern block. Bastille Day is something for France alone and the rest of Europe should not become involved in this display of military bravado.

When Jill was six she spent Bastille night in Paris with her parents. Then there was dancing and music outside the Bastille and a passing Frenchman swept me up and danced all around the square with me. I have always remembered the joy and fun of that night and expected in vain to find something of that atmosphere today.

This morning the three of us drove to Port-en-Bessin, passing through Arromanches where the remains of the portable Mulberry harbour can still be seen in the bay. The massive concrete caissons were floated secretly from Britain to provide an incredibly effective emergency harbour to enable troops to land on the beaches on D-day, 6th June 1944. All along this area of the coast there is evidence of where the British and Canadian forces landed. There are small, carefully tended war grave cemeteries scattered throughout the countryside and of course along the cliff tops there are huge German block houses, gun turrets and trenches. Slightly further north at the Point du Hoc the cliffs have been left as they were, filled with craters much as at Verdun, where off-shore Allied forces bombarded the German defences in their attempt to land.

Remains of the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches
Port-en-Bessin is an active fishing village. Today being a national holiday the quayside was lined with fishing boats and everywhere was busy with visitors enjoying the afternoon sunshine. We climbed up onto the cliffs and followed the footpath as it wound between the overgrown remains of trenches and bunkers with views over the water towards Arromanches. During the afternoon we visited a vide grenier in a nearby village. As usual the village was packed tight with cars. The French love a bargain as much as the British and the stalls were being enthusiastically turned over by bargain hunters. Generally it is unbelievable the rubbish people hope to sell in France and the prices are generally quite high. Typical was the moth-eaten stuffed fox with a bird in its mouth – a synch for four euros! Would anyone really want it on the sideboard? Or for two euros we could have bought a recycled marble plaque which could have been absolutely perfect for the right person. It read in French "Thanks to Our Lady of Lourdes for the miracle achieved 18th February 1945." On the back was an earlier message paying tribute to a lady who had died several decades earlier. We were also tempted by a couple of tea plates in memory of someone's first communion being sold as a bargain offer with a pair of frog flippers!

Harbour lock, Port-en-Bessin
On the cliffs above the harbour, Port-en-Bessin
Port-en-Bessin
Wartime trench on the cliff top, Port-en-Bessin
Back home in the evening Ian set the barbeque going, Chantal arrived from Bayeux with her two adopted Vietnamese daughters and we spent a happy couple of hours cooking and eating sausages with salad, our cheeses from the market yesterday and an apricot tart made by Chantal and the girls. Around 10.30pm, as dusk fell, we made our way down to the Prairie, a vast, open space near Caen city centre where the French equine sport of trotting usually takes place. Around the perimeter crowds were gathered and once darkness fell the fireworks began with the sound of rockets and bangers echoing over the city. It did cross Jill's mind that for some elderly people it must bring back memories each year of the bombardment of 1944, but this time it was fairly harmless and certainly very colourful. French safety rules are nowhere near as strict as in England and in the crowds around us people were setting off fire crackers which shot off in all directions with loud bangs and crackles. On the walk back home, as we passed the entrance to a subway, someone threw a giant banger down the stairs and it exploded right beside us. Our ears were still ringing when we reached home!

With Geneviève, Zoe and Eva in the garden, Caen
Hotel de Ville at night, Caen
Monday 16th July 2007, Pocé-sur-Cisse, Near Amboise, Loire Valley
Last Sunday we visited an exhibition at the Institut Mémoires de l'Edition Contemporaine in the Abbaye d'Ardenne, on the edge of the Caen. It covered the history of travel literature, based mainly on the archive's collection of travel guides produced by the French publisher Hachette. They covered 19th century phrase books and travel guides that were the forerunners of the Guides Bleu that are still produced today. While cataloguing the library of that indefatigable writer and traveller Sabine Baring-Gould at Lew Trenchard recently we found many Guides Joanne. It was interesting therefore, to see how they fitted into the long history of the publication of guidebooks by Hachette. These had started in the 1850s by supplying reading matter for railway travellers to be sold at the chain of kiosks set up on railway stations across France. Later the firm adapted to produce guides for motorists with maps of gradients and even photographs of road junctions to make up for the lack of signposts – a sort of early GIS! We were amused by a plea from the company not to purchase guides by Baedeker as it would only put money in the pockets of Germany.

Exhibition room, Institut Mémoires de l'Edition Contemporaine, Abbaye d'Ardenne, Caen
Travel posters and books, Exhibition room, Institut Mémoires de l'Edition Contemporaine, Abbaye d'Ardenne, Caen
In the evening, the weather being perfect, we had a supper party in the garden with Geneviève's brother Yves and his partner Christine, and Marie Françoise, a former work colleague of Alain at the library. Over the years she has also become a good personal friend to Geneviève and to us.

Supper in the garden, Caen

Cotentin and Mont St Michel

2007-07-20T10:21:00.000+01:00

Sunday 8th July 2006, St. Sauveur-Lendelin, Cotentin
It has been another sunny day with just enough wind to make the day pleasant. We were early up but late leaving the campsite by the time Ian had processed yesterday's megacrop of photos. The site was so pleasant we were in no hurry to leave. Learning from yesterday's experience, this evening we made a point of seeking out an inland municipal campsite. It is green, peaceful and pleasant on the edge of the village. There is only one other vehicle here even in the height of the tourist season. We feel rather sorry for the mayor and the council really as the site is so well cared for and the staff seemed rather depressed when we told them how nice it was and how horrid the coastal campsites are with inflatable dinosaurs at the entrance, bars, saunas and electronic games rooms.

Our first stop this morning was at Carteret, on the west coast of the Cotentin and one of the nearest points to Jersey which could be seen clearly from the cliff top above the town. We parked there for a circular walk followed by a picnic lunch overlooking the water, crowded today with smart yachts and speedboats making their way across to join in the Jersey maritime festival. Carteret is a pleasant seaside town devoted almost exclusively to boating. There are a few restaurants and souvenir shops but generally, apart from the boating fraternity, it is a quiet, rather empty little town though several fishing boats were busy alongside the quay preparing to return to sea. From Carteret there is a regular ferry service to Jersey. It is advertised as offering a taste of British eccentricity right on the doorstep! It is actually a more expensive crossing than going across to England! Beyond the headland with the lighthouse there are long sandy beaches and areas of sand dunes much favoured by glider planes.

Estuary of the river Gerfleur, Carteret

Cap de Carteret with Jersey on the horizon
Some French people fell into conversation with us and were surprised we did not live here, saying they had recently sold their house to English people who had very little understanding of French and they felt they must be missing so much, being unable to integrate.

During the afternoon we drove south, stopping to look at the beautiful Norman abbey at Lessay, harmoniously constructed in the local creamy white stone. It was one of the loveliest churches we have seen with its simple, unadorned rounded arches and beautifully proportioned exterior.

Abbey church, Lessay
Interior of the abbey church, Lessay
While we were the only people inside the abbey this warm Sunday afternoon, outside the streets of Lessay were thronging with people who had travelled from all over the area to join in the vide grenier taking up most of the streets in the centre of the town. A vide grenier is the French equivalent to a car boot sale and, believe us, the French have some weird junk in their attics! If you want a holy crucifix, a calendar for 1963, a knitting machine, a rusty skillet or a chain saw, this is where to look. Space being at a premium in Modestine we refrained from buying the bargain swede mincer and the lobster pot in favour of a collection of DVDs, almost all starring Gerard Depardieu, for ten cents each (6p). (Gerard Depardieu is to the French cinema what Vauban was to its military architecture. No film or fort has ever been created without them! )

Vide grenier, Lessay
We have been talking for some time about plans to visit Sicily with Geneviève. Although we have been told there is a lot of Norman architecture in Sicily, Jill at least has never quite understood why. There is a museum on the outskirts of Coutances that we hoped would clarify this. In the village of Hauteville-la-Guichard, back in the 11th century, shortly before the Norman conquest of England, lived the nobleman Tancrède together with a dozen sons. For reasons of both finance and adventure a number of them set out as mercenaries to help fight the Muslims occupying southern Italy at the time. They gained honours and success in battle and gradually became rulers of the provinces of southern Italy, one of them eventually being crowned king of Sicily by the Pope. This family of Norman brothers and their descendants ruled southern Italy for several generations, establishing a kingdom in Antioch and campaigning against Byzantium and northern Africa. Most ended up being killed in battle. Very much a die nasty dynasty! Over the years they made their mark on the architectural style of Sicily and the toe of Italy, thus Norman churches are apparently seen throughout the region.

Musée Tancrède, Hauteville-la-Guichard
At least we made it worth the while of the lady on duty at the museum and saved her sitting there all alone the entire afternoon, but it was all a bit heavy and complex to tell the truth. There was too much to absorb and understand in French on a sunny Sunday. So we went into the garden to explore the maze, play on the seesaw and listen to the bright green frogs noisily chatting each other up in the garden lake until the lady begged us to leave so she could go home.

Monday 9th July 2006, Montviron, La Manche
During the night the rain returned and we woke to a saturated world and a sky that resembled molten lead. At least the showers in the campsite were hot and we started the day with optimism. By the time we had reached Coutances, found somewhere to park and waited for the rain to ease enough for us to make a dash to the cathedral we were slightly less enthusiastic about the day. However, we explored the cathedral, which is quite lovely having fortunately been spared during the war so the pale stone and much of the stained glass windows are original and undamaged.

Cathedral, Coutances
It was still raining when we emerged but right nearby was a delicious patisserie where we sheltered happily with coffee and croissants while we read the regional newspaper Ouest France. We are now knowledgeable on everything from Wimbledon to the cycling Tour de France and the fishermen's blockade of the port at St. Vaast-la-Hougue in protest at EU fishing quotas.

Guess what the weather was doing as we finally emerged onto the streets again after the baker started making comments about us paying rent? We puddle jumped our way to the public gardens which twice already we have tried to visit in previous years but have always encountered heavy rain. This time we concluded it must always rain in Coutances so we'd just have to get wet. We discovered that the gardens are well worth a soaking, with beautifully arranged herbaceous borders, a flashing lighthouse made from rock plants, typically French walkways between carefully pruned espalier trees, and ornamental ponds.

Public gardens, Coutances
After exploring some of the narrow cobbled streets and spending considerable amounts of time sheltering in shop doorways, we returned to Modestine who is looking wonderfully clean again, and continued our travels towards Granville. We once visited the town for an overnight stay several years ago and were surprised today to realise we had remembered so much about it. Above the town we parked near the former home of Christian Dior. He spent his childhood years in a wonderful 19th century house on the cliff tops overlooking the Baie de Mont St. Michel and the Îles Chausey. The beautiful gardens, some to his own designs, are freely open to the public and the house is now a museum with permanent exhibitions of his haute couture designs up until his death in 1956. On our previous visit we went into the house to see a display of his work dedicated to travel, ranging from costumes for air hostesses to hairbrushes and vanity bags for travellers. Around the garden today we discovered panels explaining the different perfumes he produced and the plants that inspired them. There were even little doors to open so the visitor could experience each of his acclaimed fragrances in different parts of the garden.

Bust in the Jardin de Christian Dior
Christian Dior's home, Granville
Perfume display in Jardin de Christian Dior
Jill opens the dior and sniffs, Jardin de Christian Dior
The rain had mercifully stopped though a strong wind had replaced it. We climbed down the high cliffs from the garden to the sea front and walked along to the town centre, past the casino and up into the historic old town with its narrow passageways and uncomfortable cobbled streets. We are on the edge of Normandy here and the architecture and building materials reflect Brittany rather than Normandy. Grey and black slate roofs, schist and granite have completely replaced the crumbling white stone walls and red, lichen covered tiles generally associated with Normandy. From the old town, high on the cliffs, there are excellent views over the harbour and across the water towards Jersey. From the quayside regular ferries cross to both Jersey and Sark.

Granville – fortified town and casino from the Jardin de Christian Dior
Gateway to the fortified town, Granville
Harbour, Granville
Granville from the old town walls
It was nearly 6pm by the time we rejoined Modestine and set off in search of a campsite. The one we hoped to use had disappeared. Everyone we asked told us exactly where it was but all we could find was a field of overgrown grass and a padlocked gate, so we gave up and drove off in search of another one. At the last minute, on the outskirts of the village, we got caught up in a "deviation" that rivalled the German "Umleitung" for distance and complexity. Somehow, after driving for ages through country lanes, we arrived at this campsite which seems fine and again is almost empty. This is not surprising as most people do not have the same tenacity as us and would probably have given up and stopped off to spend the night in Paris as the "deviation" passed through the Place de la Concorde for the second time.

Tuesday 10th July 2006, Pontaubault, Baie de Mont St. Michel
It rained almost all of last night and this morning the campsite was a quagmire. Still in the rain we returned to the coast and continued around the bay of Mont St. Michel At one point we stopped for a walk along the coastal footpath to the lonely granite building known as the Cabane Vaubin perched on top of the cliffs from where we could see the Mount topped by the high spire of the abbey. It stood alone, far from the mainland amidst the treacherous sands of the bay. The tidal flow is amongst the greatest in the world with a difference between high and low water of about 15 metres. Although the bay can be walked across at low tide, it requires an experienced guide as the incoming tide arrives with terrific force and speed. All around the perimeter of the bay are oyster beds and on the far side lies the little town of Cancale, famed for supplying possibly the best oysters in France.

Cabane Vaubin, Baie de St. Michel
Mont St. Michel seen through the doorway of Cabane Vaubin
Mont St. Michel from Grouin du Sud
For much of the day we have followed the route of the bay, stopping at several of the little granite villages such as Genêts, typical of the region. Our target today was Avranches, still in Normandy but architecturally part of Brittany. It stands high on a defensive mount overlooking the bay and struck us as a very pleasant, if rather austere town. It is certainly the only one we have ever found that bases its entire tourist industry on an excellent exhibition concerning the history of writing and manuscripts!

On the edge of the village of Genêts
Donjon at Avranches
Avranches and the basilica of St.Gervais seen from the Donjon
During the French revolution many churches and abbeys were sacked and their contents destroyed, much as happened in Britain during the civil war in the 17th century. The monastic library of Mont St. Michel survived but its contents, including more than 200 medieval manuscripts were taken from the abbey by the state and removed to Avranches. The scriptorium at Mont St. Michel had been a leading centre for the copying of texts and developed a distinctive style, influenced heavily by Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Just last year the town opened its Scriptorial, a fascinating exhibition, particularly for us as librarians, on the history of books and manuscripts and their production. Each stage of the process of a manuscript was explained, from the use and preparation of parchment, inks, illumination and illustration of the text and finally the binding in leather and gold decoration of the boards. The exhibition also covered the early development of printing through to the digitisation of early texts before finally leading into an exhibition of some of the museum's greatest treasures with beautifully illustrated manuscripts, religious books of hours and items of particular relevance to the history of Avranches. We marvelled at the minute script of many of the volumes as well as the intricate decoration. To protect the precious originals only about fifteen are on display at any one time in a darkened room.

As a special bonus our ticket gave us entry to an exhibition of the work of Salvador Dali. We were delighted about this as we visited his personal museum at Figueres in Spain in 2006 and found it fascinating. We have to confess however, that we didn't really understand today's exhibition at all. We console ourselves with the thought that it didn't look as if Dali had any more idea than us what it was all about! There is no denying however, his artistic ability or his fertile imagination.

The town is also famed as the place where in 1172 Henry II of England, Duke of Normandy, did public penance to atone for inciting the massacre of St. Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. For this he had been excommunicated by the Pope and his penance paved the way to reconciliation with the Church. The spot at the former door of the cathedral - long since destroyed, can still be seen.

Where Henry II did public penance, Avaranches
In the basilica there is a painting of St. Aubert, archbishop of Avranches during the eighth century. The archangel Michael appeared to him twice in a dream ordering him to build a Benedictine monastery on the top of Mount Tombe, at that time, according to the legend, well inland and surrounded by forest. Twice the Archbishop turned a deaf ear to such a seemingly difficult task, until St. Michael appeared again and, poking him in the head, ordered him to get on with it. Thus the abbey church of Mont St. Michel came to be built. This is all absolutely true and to prove it St. Aubin's skull is preserved in the basilica, complete with a hole about the same size as an archangel's index finger!

We really were both very weary by the time we finally returned to Modestine. There remains much to see in Avranches but tonight all we were interested in was finding a campsite and drying out after a day of rain. The one we have discovered is run by an Englishman who seemed keen to talk and to tell us of the woes of running a French campsite when it never stops raining. He says he is already £4,000 down on his takings this year and has only a third of the number of campers he'd expect to have in July. We feel very sorry for all the campsite owners we have met who are really struggling to cope with their losses and the awful weather.

Wednesday 11th July 2006, Pontaubault, Domfront
This morning it was STILL raining. When we left the campsite owner thanked us for staying saying even the 15 euros we'd paid made a difference! He seemed really cheesed off.

Driving peacefully around the edge of the bay, through the pretty countryside and granite villages we eventually arrived at Mont St. Michel and discovered where all the tourists from both Normandy and Brittany were. There was an entire city of white camping cars parked on the causeway at the foot of the mount and a huge car park filled with coaches and private cars. We left Modestine and walked with the hundreds of other "pilgrims" along the causeway constructed across the sands of the bay to the gateway leading into the narrow, crowded street that wound steeply up towards the abbey at the summit. Either side of this cobbled path were restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, museums and stalls selling takeaway food and drinks. Already at mid-morning the street was crowded and when we later returned it was packed solid.

Mont St. Michel from the causeway
Inside the defensive walls, Mont St. Michel
We made our way up the rock until we reached the abbey walls where we stopped to look out over the bay, back along the edge of the mainland we travelled yesterday and on round into Brittany, with the mound of Dol-de-Bretagne showing above the surrounding landscape, and right on to Cancale at the furthest point. The tide was out and small groups of people, looking like ants on the vast expanse of wet sand, were making their way across from the Mount to the island of Tombelaine.

La Merveille, Mont St. Michel
The bay at low tide seen from the abbey, Mont St. Michel
View towards the reclaimed polders, Mont St. Michel
We paid our eight euros each to see round the abbey and the attached buildings. The whole is a wonderful piece of engineering built on and into the granite rock, indeed the three storey range of buildings to the north of the abbey church, constructed in the 13th century, has always been known as the Merveille. The distinctive profile of the Mount is relatively recent as the spire topped by the Archangel Michael was only added in 1897. The 11th century abbey church was constructed on a platform 80 metres above the bay. Although it lost the westernmost three bays of the nave after a fire in the 18th century the nave with its heavy granite arcades makes a sober and impressive impact, contrasting with the lightness of the flamboyant Gothic chancel built after the Romanesque chancel collapsed in 1421. The great pillared crypt below the chancel shows that the builders were taking no chances of a similar disaster happening in the future. The missing three bays of the nave were replaced by a terrace with magnificent views over the bay. The cloisters with an elegant double arcade were designed to be light in weight as they were built above the refectory. This in turn is above the impressive guests' hall and the Knights' Hall, an airy room which originally served as the monks' study area and scriptorium where so many of the wonderful manuscripts in their library were produced. The abbey became extremely wealthy, having jurisdiction over many estates in Normandy and further afield. Beside St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, in Devon it owned Budleigh, Dotton, Harpford, Otterton, Sidmouth, Stoodleigh, Venn Ottery and Yarcombe.

Interior of the abbey showing the chancel, Mont St. Michel
The abbey crypt, Mont St. Michel
Cloisters, Mont St. Michel

Refectory, Mont St. Michel
Scriptorium, Mont St. Michel
Miniature groups of pilgrims crossing the sands to the island of Tombelaine seen from Mont St. Michel
We returned down and continued to the nearby little town of Pontorsin for a lunch of moules et frites (mussels cooked with onions, herbs and white wine and served with tiny chips) in a small bar where everyone smoked, even the barman! European anti-smoking laws are completely ineffective in France and ignored by everyone. None of the other customers seemed to spend any money. They just sat around exchanging the odd comment, shaking hands, drinking on credit and drifting away. They all looked scruffy and rather bored. Pontorsin is a very pleasant granite town with a wide sunny main street full of estate agents selling properties to the British who seem to have discovered this particular area of Normandy in a rather big way.

The sun returned for the rest of day, which has been really pleasant. We moved on to the American cemetery on the border with Brittany at St. James containing over 4,400 war graves of American soldiers who lost their lives in the early days of the debarquement from June to September 1944. It was beautiful and peaceful with a detailed wall maps in the chapel explaining the American advance and how their approach joined up with simultaneous attacks on other fronts made by the UK and Commonwealth. While the British and Canadians have smaller scattered cemeteries, the Americans have two large ones.

American cemetery at St. James
At the little town of Mortain we discovered La Petite Chapelle, built on the summit of a hill 314 metres high offering stunning views across a wide sweep of the landscape. From here we could see 47 km to the bay of Mont St. Michel with the mount clearly visible.

La Petite Chapelle, Mortain

View from La Petite Chapelle, Mont St. Michel on the horizon, Mortain
Hill 314 as it was code named, is the site of one of the worst engagements the American troops encountered during the Normandy landings. Here the German troops ceased their retreat and fought back inflicting heavy casualties. The fighting is commemorated by an American monument near the chapel to those who died.

In memory of those who died in battle, La Petite Chapelle, Mortain
Finally we arrived at Domfront and found this wonderful municipal campsite. It is amazing value at less than 9 euros including electricity and excellent hot showers. It is peaceful, well managed, spotlessly clean and uncrowded. We have been able to enjoy supper outside and it has been warm and sunny. We have both felt very weary after the day's activity so after supper we moved inside and relaxed as we watched a video.

Caen and Cotentin

2007-07-16T09:09:00.000+01:00

Monday 2nd July continued, Caen
It was wonderful to wake up on Sunday morning in a dry, comfortable house, hear the rain teaming down outside and to know that this morning we didn't have to slither across a muddy field in the wet and queue for the communal facilities. We wallowed in the luxury of a lovely fragrant bathroom with hot water and dry towels followed by freshly filtered coffee and baguettes in Geneviève's kitchen as we chatted and watched the rain flooding over the lawn outside.

Later the rain eased and we set off to walk to the Sunday market beside the river Orne. However, the plan was abandoned when Jill's foot suddenly decided to play up and we were obliged to return back home. We are now a day further on and it is gradually improving but will need attention once we are home. The cobbled streets of Europe have a lot to answer for.

Our plans for a barbeque lunch were also abandoned when Rain made it quite clear he wanted to be invited too. Later we visited Geneviève's mother, Germaine who had invited us for coffee and cake, before taking a drive down to the coast to look at the sea.

The coast along this part of Normandy is unlike anything we have seen in England. There are wide open vistas stretching empty to the horizon and as far as can be seen along the coast. From Luc-sur-Mer there are hazy views of the industrial waterfront at Le Havre with the oil refineries somehow looking remarkably picturesque as an indistinct line on the seascape where the Seine reaches the sea. It was along these flat sandy beaches the allied troops landed under heavy gunfire in June 1944.

It was the colours that made the view so enchanting. They ranged from the pale cream of the shore with a line of green seaweed where sand and sea met, the ever-changing blue-green-azure colours of the water and the many different tones of grey in the sky, dark and ominous on the horizon. Brilliantly white against the sea was the cross-channel ferry as it left the nearby port of Ouistreham on its way to Portsmouth, the sky above flecked by wheeling seagulls. On the beach a lone fisherman with his rod and bucket completed the seascape that we longed to be able to paint. Ian's photos cannot remotely do it justice.

Seascape at Luc-sur-Mer, Calvados
The sound of music in the gardens of the Hotel de Ville attracted us from the seafront back into the little town. Here we discovered people dancing the tango to music from a live band. We also discovered a mini zoo with goats, geese and chickens and the skeleton of a huge whale displayed amidst the herbaceous borders.

Whale in the gardens of the Town Hall, Luc-sur-Mer, Calvados
Today, Monday, the rain has continued but we have spent almost the entire day indoors each working on a different computer as we struggle to catch up with the backlog of photos, emails and blogs. With the rain falling outside it's a really nice place to be. Between the showers Ian climbed the cherry tree in the back garden and relieved it of several bowls of fruit. It has more than enough for us and the entire bird population of the district.

Tuesday 3rd July, Caen
It rained solidly all morning and we spent our time comfortably around the house as far apart from each other as possible relishing the pleasure of having our own personal space and a computer each to work on. As a result we have reduced the backlog of blogs waiting to be loaded and Ian has developed the site for manhole covers which now includes images from Trindad as well as hundreds from across Europe. We know just how addicted you have all become to manhole cover spotting and realise that it is the main reason you look at our blog. Now though you can go directly to possibly the largest site of such photos on the internet! We've even set up a counter so we can see just how widespread interest in this newly revealed art form is becoming. So take a look at http://manholemiscellany.blogspot.com.

During the afternoon the sun came out and we walked – or in Jill's case hobbled – down to the city centre for a stroll around the shops and a very relaxed coffee at one of the sunny street cafés. In the evening, as Geneviève was still living in the rosy afterglow of her retirement lunch with work colleagues, Jill organised a simple supper which we shared together with wine while Geneviève recounted the rather moving events of her day. After thirty five years working with the same organisation there is a lot of emotion wrapped up with saying farewell.

Wednesday 4th July 2006, Caen
All morning we continued to make inroads into the accumulated emails, electronic banking queries, digital photos and blogs while the rain fell and Confetti, the cat from next door, made itself comfortable on our bed in the attic when we were not looking. A lovely ginger colour he seeks peace and refuge with Geneviève – rather like us – and gets annoyed if he is not always allowed immediate entry.

Let me in!
During the afternoon we walked across the city to visit our friend Claire and in the evening Geneviève's brother joined us for a small family diner to celebrate Geneviève's retirement and to inaugurate the Bohemian crystal glasses we purchased in Prague.

Jill and Claire with Meille
Geneviève demonstrates the correct way to cook a soufflé
Yves and Jill celebrate the start of Geneviève's new life
Thursday 5th July 2006, St-Vaast-la-Hougue, Cotentin
We have moved on before we became too cushioned against the privations of camping in the rain and we are now happy parked up on a clean, pleasant site from where we can see the tower of the Vauban fort on the offshore island of Tatihou. The campsite leaflet printed in English gives us lots of helpful advice, such as "the worn piles are to be deposited in the reception," (used batteries), and "worn water is not to be disposed in the WC." Ian's favourite is "…animations are proposed. Club children every morning from 10am…"

We have taken ourselves off for a few days to investigate more closely the area of the Cotentin, that finger of land that sticks up into what we call the English Channel and the French call La Manche (sleeve). All along the coast are signs of the D-Day landings during the Second World War and beaches are known today more by their military codenames than their real ones. Thus there are the areas where the British landed – Sword and Gold; the Canadians – Juno; and the Americans, Omaha and Utah. The coastline is littered with the remains of blockhouses hidden amongst the sand dunes, several of which have been adapted to provide military museums and interpretation centres. Just back inland are the war grave cemeteries, quite as impressive and thought provoking as those we saw at Verdun. This area is already very familiar to us and as it was teaming with rain we did not linger. We have recorded our impressions several years ago in notebooks which one day we may edit.

Normandy is a very pretty region and even in the rain it has a definite charm. We drove through the country roads of the bocage with its small fields and green hedges that caused such difficulties for the armoured tanks of the Americans. We passed pretty stone villages of neat cottages, their gardens filled with bright hydrangeas. Reaching the coast beyond Carentan we followed the road northward behind the sand-dunes of Utah beach where the Americans met such violent resistance as they tried to land that there are 9,380 white crosses in the nearby American cemetery at Colleville. Passing through the curiously named coastal resort of Quettehoe we decided to stop here at St-Vaast-la-Hougue for the night in the hope that the rain and wind will have eased by the morning and we can walk to the fort on the tip of the picturesque isthmus of land jutting out to the south of the tiny island of Tatihou.

Friday 6th July 2006, Omanville-la-Rogue, Cotentin
The rain did indeed leave us in peace today and our walk to the fort was brisk and very breezy, accomplished in bright sunlight. We have spent a lovely day, a real holiday amidst the sometimes quite tiring events of travelling and recording everything we have seen.

We have developed a love affair with the north part of the Cotentin. It is a wonderfully peaceful area, devoid of heavy traffic with stunning seascapes that take you by surprise when turning a bend in the road or cresting a hill. It is like Cornwall and Brittany rolled into one. The scenery, after so long travelling through Europe, far from the sea, is pure delight. It is strange to have travelled for so many months and to discover the most wonderful place of all is just across the Channel around Cherbourg!

This area of the Cotentin is granite. The big, crumbling stone houses of the villages around Caen have given way here to rows of granite cottages lining the village squares and streets, or set back slightly within stone walled gardens filled with hydrangeas. The spires of tiny village churches stick up against the skyline seen across estuaries and bays where oyster beds are tended at low tide. The harbours are filled with small fishing boats unloading their catch while local people wait on the quayside ready to purchase their crabs, langoustine and mixed fish – sole, mackerel and red mullet. On several headlands can be seen the tall granite towers of the lighthouses, their beams so powerful the one at Gatteville apparently crosses with the beam from one on the Isle of Wight!

Oyster beds, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
Lighthouse at Gatteville
Our day started with a visit to the fort on the tip of the causeway at St. Vaast-la-Hougue. The sea washed the granite walls of the defensive moat that surrounds it, choppy from the strong wind that whipped up a spray from the crest of the incoming waves. We walked around the fort along the top of the wall, too narrow for confidence and buffeted by the wind, to return along a wooded path leading to the fort entrance and back over the mudflats of low tide to the town of St. Vaast with its lively, active harbour where fishermen sorted their nets, washed down the decks of their boats and deftly gutted fish and dismembered crabs.

Vauban Fort de la Hougue, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
Before the path became scary, Fort de la Hougue, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
Entrance to the Fort de la Hougue, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
Fishing boats in the harbour, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
Fresh crabs for sale, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
We have been coming to France for more years than we can remember but on the occasions we have arrived through the port of Cherbourg it has usually been at night and we have driven straight along the main road to Caen, passing through Bayeux and have never closely explored this area of the coast. The little granite towns of St. Vaast and Barfleur are real gems. We are not alone in thinking so. There are many English people walking the streets of both places, some obviously boating people who have their yachts moored in the marinas.

A short distance from the port at St. Vaast, right on the sea shore, we discovered a picturesque eleventh century chapel with a grassy lawn, bright hydrangeas and a war memorial disguising the remains of a blockhouse. Just beside it, overlooking the sea, was our dream house! The one we have somewhere in the backs of our minds been searching for in France! And it was for sale! Our excitement and imagination were both unleashed and it was only after discussing everything over coffee and returning for a further look that common sense gradually took control and we began to notice the decayed state of the house, pockmarked from shrapnel fire and with ominous cracks that had been badly filled on the end walls, and a garden completely overgrown. It has obviously been standing empty for years. The position is perfect and with lots of money to spend it could be turned into a very valuable and beautiful property, but at our age, even if we could afford it in its present state, there is no knowing what it would cost to make it habitable and anyway we would want to enjoy it now not spend years restoring it!

Fishermen's Chapel, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
Dream home or nightmare? Beside the Fishermen's Chapel, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
So we tore ourselves away and continued along the coast to the small, pretty, coastal town of Barfleur with its granite church overlooking the sea surrounded by its maritime cemetery. One is constantly reminded of the power and danger from the sea to the village communities who even today still rely on it for their livelihood. All too often we have seen memorial plaques in the churches to those who have disappeared along with their fishing boats. Barfleur was the port from which the Normans sailed to conquer England and it was from here too that Henry 1st of England, Duke of Normandy and son of William the Conqueror lost both his children when the ship carrying them to England was wrecked off the coast in 1120.

In memory of those lost at sea, St. Vaast-la-Hougue
Barfleur
Mediaeval house of Porte Ste. Catherine, Barfleur
After a very windy picnic lunch on the rocks beside the sea we continued around the coast to Gatteville and Fermanville, both beautiful granite villages filled with flowers and surrounded by sea and small fields of vegetables or cattle. Beyond Fermanville is the lighthouse of Cap Lévy and also Fort Lévy, built by Napoleon to help protect the huge Rade de Cherbourg from attack by the English. The rade itself, at the time of its construction, was the largest artificial harbour in the world. Its granite walls stretching out into the sea across Cherbourg seafront seen from the fort on the cliff-tops across the bay are most impressive.

11th century chapel, Gatteville
It was too late to do any justice to Cherbourg by this time. It has always struck us as a very pleasant town but today we simply passed through to continue around the coast on the far side until we chanced on this very agreeable campsite on the edge of a village near the most northerly tip of the Cotentin at Cap de la Hague.

Saturday 7th July 2006, St.Germain-le-Gaillard, Cotentin
This morning the wind had dropped and the summer weather was back at last. We breakfasted outside on the very peaceful, sunny campsite at Omanville-la-Rogue before driving through the narrow country lanes edged by high hedges of ferns, brambles and flowers that make it so very like Devon, to the neighbouring tiny picturesque village of Omanville-la-Petite. Here we parked beside the church where the renowned French poet and writer Jacques Prévert is buried. He spent the later years of his life here and a short walk up the road at the top of the village we discovered his home, now a museum. We are not familiar with his writing and as the house was not open until 11am we did not explore inside. The garden though is charming with flowering shrubs, shady pines and azaleas and attractive garden furniture. Back in the village we found our second dream home for sale. This time in far better condition and only a mile or so back from the sea. In dreams anything is possible so we fantasised for a brief while before facing the reality that the owners were unlikely to want peanuts for it and anyway we only had half a packet in Modestine's cupboard.

Home of the writer Jacques Prévert in Omanville-la-Petite
Jacques Prévert in the churchyard, Omanville-la-Petite
We have visited several of Europe's extremities during our recent travels so today we headed for the northernmost tip of the Cotentin Peninsula, Cap de la Hague with the tiny fishing port of Gourey. While the interior of the Cotentin may be remarkably like deepest Devon, the coastline is definitely like Cornwall. Here though, the picturesque tin mines of the Land's End Peninsula are replaced by the hideous remains of wartime German block houses. Somebody had scrawled across one "Nie wieder Krieg" (no more war), the only graffiti we've seen all week and something that turned a memorial to the wrongs of the past into a message of hope for the future.

German block house, Cap de la Hague
We parked Modestine well back from Gourey, overlooking the lighthouse and the Channel Islands with Alderney so clear on the horizon that we could discern its lighthouse with the naked eye. Down in the fishing hamlet we explored its harbour, and watched a fishing boat return from sea and unload its catch of crabs before we walked along a pebble ridge edged by the curve of the bay with the lighthouse off shore on one side, and long strip fields of cereals on the other. As in Alderney, fields are long and narrow, edged here by dry stone walls, protecting the crops from the force of the sea winds. We were intrigued to discover pebbles on the ridge of a type we have always thought were unique to those to be found at Budleigh Salterton in Devon. They are smooth and rounded by the sea, beautifully mottled and coloured. In Budleigh they have been washed out from the cliffs ready formed and examination of the land along the coast of Cap de la Hague shows the same phenomenon. A look at the map later also shows that tidal currents or the flow of a massive river way back in the earth's history may quite possibly have deposited pebbles in a line linking the two coasts. We are not geologists but it's a theory we will investigate on our return home. Certainly we have never seen these pebbles anywhere else. In the Cotentin though, they are mixed in with the rougher granite pebbles one would expect to find here.

First attempts at a cross-channel rail link, Gourey

Bringing home the catch, Cap de la Hague
Unloading the catch, Cap de la Hague
Offshore lighthouse at Cap de la Hague
Pebble ridge, Cap de la Hague
Budleigh pebbles at Cap de la Hague
Strip-field system, Cap de la Hague
Reaching the semaphore station of the French coastguard service, as we turned inland we discovered a plaque commemorating attempts in 1902 to send telegraphic messages without using wires. Messages were successfully transmitted over a distance of 300 kilometres. The key figure and designer of the equipment was Edouard Branly (1844-1940) but work was halted for years through a dispute with the French government who claimed a monopoly of the telegraph service and impounded his equipment. It was not until the loss of the Titanic that the government realised the true value of such a system and development was allowed to continue. There are still traces of the equipment to be found on the beach and offshore.

Monument to early wireless telegraphy experiments, Cap de la Hague
We returned to Modestine through lanes bordered by dry-stone walls filled with foxgloves, pink campion, succulent rock plants, ferns and heather, where cattle in the fields raised their heads from munching momentarily to gaze as we passed. We continued towards Joburg, with its massive nuclear power station (Cogema) set on the cliffs overlooking Alderney. Against the skyline in this isolated, windswept area its white chimneys, tanks and turrets looked rather artistic, in the same way as the telecommunications centre does on Goonhilly Downs in Cornwall. There is nothing else on this bare moorland cliff top except the miniscule hamlet of Joburg with its 11th century granite church. The lady arranging flowers inside told us there would be a marine wedding there during the afternoon. In the mairie nearby we discovered an exhibition of local arts and crafts, similar to the ones our late friend Danielle used to organise in her village in Guissény with everything from oil paintings and decorated china to embroidery, hand painted silk, woven baskets, cushions, baby clothes and soft toys.

Church at Joburg
Church interior showing mediaeval gravestones, Joburg
We parked on the cliffs overlooking the Baie d'Ecalgrain with a view to the Nez de Voidries for our lunch. The sun was warm, reflecting from the white topped waves as they broke on the rocks at the base of the cliffs while overhead we were subjected to whoops of glee from a couple of hang-gliders sweeping almost silently through the air on the thermal currents that allowed them to wheel and dive there for hours.

Baie d'Ecalgrain and Nez de Voidries near Cap de la Hague
After so much cold, wet weather the hot sunshine had released pollen and we were both suffering badly with itching eyes and perpetual sneezing. Poor Ian seems to have been sneezing ever since we left England in April! After walking over the clifftops to look down on the Nez de Joburg (almost as massive and wet as le Nez d'Ian) and to the misty outlines on the horizon of Guernsey, Jersey and Sark we drove down into the seaside village of Vauville. Here there is a famed tropical garden on the seashore where we spent a couple of hours wandering its pretty pathways through groves of palm trees through which we could glimpse the sandy beach and the sparkle of sunlight on the sea. It almost had us wondering if we were back in Trinidad or Sri Lanka! The garden surrounds a very English looking castle however with purple, heather covered moorland behind. Within the garden are streams, ornamental ponds, fountains, tropical vegetation, ferns, a Japanese garden and a wide lawn with a border of exotic lilies overlooking the sea.

Nez de Joburg
Palm trees beside the sea. Gardens at Vauville
Japenese garden at Vauville
Gardens at Vauville
By the time we left it was getting late so we headed for the nearest small town on the map, Beaumont-Hague, to restock Modestine's fridge and fuel tank. This turned out to be a delightful place, clean and bright, just back from the sea with a wide main street, plenty of free parking and little traffic. There was excellent free internet access, spotless public facilities – as they have all been in this part of France, a modern library and swimming pool and a huge well stocked supermarket selling the cheapest diesel we have found outside Luxembourg. From the charcuterie shop we bought couscous with chicken and lamb to reheat for supper before setting off to find a campsite for the night. Continuing southwards along the west side of the Cotentin we found several sites, all on the beach. Here the granite rocks have given way to long beaches of golden sand which we saw clearly visible as a fringe along the shoreline from Jersey when we cycled around that island some years ago. This coastline is less dramatic and less to our taste but popular for family camping holidays. Thus, in July, campsite charges were 29 euros a night plus four for electricity. Nor were they to our taste as we gave up using bouncy castles some years ago now. So we turned inland and found the small, peaceful, spotless municipal campsite here at St.Germain-le-Gaillard which is costing us all of eight euros a night including electricity and hot showers! The local commune is hardly likely to get rich on it but it is a lovely, comfortable, simple site offering all we need.

We have sometimes been rather critical of the places we have visited so it is only right that we record here that this area of France is clean, beautiful and friendly. It epitomises everything that one dreams of about the country with none of the things that at times can be so distasteful. If you want coffee and croissants you don't need a mortgage to buy them, if you fancy moules et frites on the quayside it will set you back a mere £5. The towns and villages are picturesque, the garden flowers beautiful, the inland countryside green and verdant and the coastline stunningly beautiful. There is no graffiti, no litter and no canine mess. Public facilities are easily found and as clean as you would wish in your own home. Everywhere is within easy reach of the port of Cherbourg, so why hasn't it undergone mass immigration by the British as have Provence and the Dordogne? In the unlikely event of us moving from Devon the Cotentin is where we would go!

Beauvais Rouen Honfleur

2007-07-05T11:10:00.000+01:00

Thursday 28th June 2007, Beauvais
We had thought we would spend some time exploring Châlons-en-Champagne this morning but we found parking completely impossible and the streets difficult to negotiate as went around in circles trying to find a way out.

Today though we feel we have achieved quite a lot. We have travelled through the Champagne region, along beside the river Marne where many of the villages had memorials and small war graves cemeteries, as the Marne saw much of the carnage of the First World War. The region is also famed for a happier reason. This is where they invented Champagne and the hillsides are completely covered in the vines that produce the perfect grapes. It is quite an experience to drive along the hillside above the river with the bright green of the vineyards stretching like a patchwork of green corduroy as far as the eye can see. Each vine is already heavy with the hard green grapes that will ripen in the warm sunshine over the coming months. Every grape must be gathered and before that everything must be lined up ready for processing so the fermentation can start immediately. Considering the work and the risks involved it's small wonder Champagne does not come cheap! The hillsides were a complete contrast to the scruffy, muddy, crumbling untidy little towns and villages we passed through where cellars offer tastings, the grapes are processed and the business side of the venture is accomplished.

War memorial on the edge of one of the village bordering the river Marne
River Marne seen from the vineyards of Champagne
Champagne grapes
Village set amidst the vineyards
Machinery for trimming the vines, built high so that it can pass above the rows
Winding through the countryside at such a slow pace becomes quite tiring so we were happy to stop at a pleasant spot amidst the vines for a peaceful picnic lunch where the sun graced us with its presence.

Deciding that if we were to get anywhere today we'd best get a move on we transferred to the fast arterial route and made excellent progress until we saw a sign advertising the largest exhibition of camping cars in Europe. Confident that there would not be another Modestine, and in need of a replacement lock for one of her internal doors, we turned off to investigate. Sure enough, we'd been parked for all of 15 seconds before someone discovered her, delighted at her size and wanted all sorts of details. In the accessories shop we found exactly the closure we needed and repaired the door in no time. At last Jill can sleep soundly without the fear of the temporary rubber bands breaking and the door falling open on top of her!

Next we phoned Debbie, the daughter of our friends Martin and Penny. She and her French husband live near Beauvais and we would be passing almost through their village. We'd not seen them since their wedding a couple of years ago so it was a great pleasure to be welcomed to their home and to meet their baby son. It has been the happy highlight of our day. We did not stay long, they were off to Metz this evening, a journey they estimate will take them four hours. We've just spent best part of a week travelling from Metz, which shows how much we sometimes linger and wander in Modestine!

Debbie and Thomas see us on our way
We found the municipal campsite in Beauvais situated on a hill within walking distance of the city centre so we will explore it tomorrow. Ian's first ever trip to France was to stay with a school exchange pen-friend in Beauvais. All he can remember is the family's shoe shop opposite the Cathedral so he wants to know if it is still there!

There is a label attached to the new trousers Ian is wearing. The brand name is Titanium and it claims they are "technical gear for people who push the limits and often break them". It even repeats it in French. He's being dying to find something more dynamic to do in them than trot off across the campsite to wash the supper dishes!

Friday 29th June 2007, Rouen
It has rained pretty well continuously all day. This morning we walked down into the town of Beauvais to seek out the Cathedral and anywhere that Ian might recognise from his childhood visit to the town. Beauvais Cathedral is enormous! It has the highest choir in Europe. It has been ill fated throughout its existence and was in fact never even completed. What you see today is the choir alone. The spire, which at the time made it the tallest building in the world, collapsed, bringing down the nave as well during the 16th century. Then in the 2nd World War the city was very badly bombed, taking out all the stained glass and rendering what remained of the Cathedral unsound. Ian recalls walking around at roof level where the finials were loose and could actually be wobbled on their supports. Fortunately access is no longer allowed but iron braces support the buttresses and inside the columns are shored up with wooden scaffolding. The whole place looks in a sorry state and one wonders whether the money will ever be found to restore it.

Beauvais Cathedral
Jill dwarfed by the size of the interior of Beauvais Cathedral
There was no sign of the shoe shop facing the cathedral where Ian once stayed, but the lady in the tourist office confirmed that it used to exist though now there is a café on the site. So for old time's sake we went to the café and drank a couple of coffees.

Because it was so badly damaged during the last war there is not a great deal to see in the town. There are pleasant pedestrianised areas of shops and cafés, a few surviving streets of older, half timbered houses – known as maisons en pain de bois, and a 1911 house originally owned by the potter Christoph Greber, who advertised his products by decorating the façade of his house with examples of his work. Thus it is covered in frogs and salamanders.

One of the few streets to survive the war, Beauvais
Greber House, Beauvais
Detail of the Greber House, Beauvais

Collecting Modestine from the municipal campsite we drove through heavy rain towards Rouen. When we saw a road sign to Lyons-la-Forêt we turned off to investigate as Jill was sure she had heard about it somewhere. It turned out to be well worth the detour as it is listed as one of the most beautiful villages in France – there are about 150 on the list. Nestling in peaceful countryside in the depths of woodland the streets are lined with pain de bois houses and pretty gardens. There is a huge old covered market in the centre of the village and a plaque stating that Henry I of England and Duke of Normandy, the eldest son of William the Conqueror, died at his castle at Lyons-la-Forêt in 1135.

Lyons-la-Forêt
Covered market, Lyons-la-Forêt
After a picnic lunch at the belvedere overlooking the village we continued, still through the rain, to the outskirts of Rouen. This is one of France's larger cities and we didn't fancy driving through it on a Friday afternoon. Our AA campsite book listed a site on the outskirts from where we thought it likely we could get a bus into the city. The site looked rather unprepossessing when we arrived but the owner assured us it was ideal for the city with regular buses. He also assured us he had proper toilets facilities, and, assuming the AA would not have listed it unless it reached a reasonable standard, we gave him our 12 euros, left Modestine and caught the bus into town. It was not until we returned we realised just how unpleasant the site is. Not to dwell too much on it, it is quite unsanitary with inadequate, dirty facilities and no hot water. There are no lights at night and broken steps and wet grass to negotiate to reach the only useable toilet which just now we discovered had been left unflushed. Having travelled all over Europe in recent months, we feel we are reasonably aware of the vagaries of campsites, and country for country the French ones are in general the most unsavoury we have found. In Rouen this afternoon we saw countless hairdressers and shops giving manicures and gluing on artificial nails. The French have a word-wide reputation for glamour, charm, sophistication and chic, yet nationally, standards of public sanitation and hygiene, where they can be found at all, have too frequently remained unchanged since the 19th century.

The bus into town dropped us beside the muddy waters of the Seine as it flows through the city. With dripping umbrellas we made our way to the old part of the city, now a pedestrianised shopping centre built into the pain de bois houses of the city. It is certainly picturesque with a wealth of such properties, the timbers frequently hung with decorative slates or painted in dark reds or blues. We visited the Cathedral with its famous façade, painted so many times by Monet in different colours to reflect its changing moods throughout the days and seasons. Inside it is quite austere, unadorned gothic, a contrast to the more elaborate exterior. We also visited St. Maclou, a very beautiful flamboyant gothic building with delicate tracery over the main door and a rose window. Inside an organ recital was filling every corner of the church with a vibrating cascade of sound.

Entrance gateway with clock, Rouen
Courts of Justice, Rouen
Near the Cathedral, Rouen
Monet's favourite view, Rouen
Catherdal spire, Rouen
Interior of the Cathedral, Rouen
Façade of St. Maclou, Rouen
There is much more to see in the centre but we were there for a specific reason. We had seen where Jeanne d'Arc came into the world in Domrémy, and Rouen was where she left it just twenty years later, burned at the stake in the centre of the town. There is a large cross to mark the spot and where the fire was built there is now a memorial flower bed.

Spot where Jeanne d'Arc was martyred, Rouen
Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen
Before returning to Modestine we explored some of the streets slightly off centre and chanced upon Aître St. Maclou, a collection of pain de bois buildings from the 15th century arranged around a courtyard. It had formerly been used as a burial ground for plague victims and the carvings on the wooden timbers reflected this with macabre skulls, bones and tools of the grave digger – shovels, picks and axes.

Detail of Aître St. Maclou, Rouen
Typical street near Eglise St. Maclou, Rouen
The bus journey home was a nightmare with everyone dripping wet and squashed into the bus so tightly a lady caught her hand in the automatic closing doors. By the time she was released her hand was badly bruised and she was in tears. Nobody offered her a seat however and she was lurched around the bus with the rest off us on the hilly, twisting, jolting ascent out of the town. It was interesting to see Rouen once, but it would be a very unpleasant town in which to live and we were glad to leave it behind. To cheer ourselves up back on the smelly wet campsite we finished our bottle of wine and watched a DVD on the computer. If the world outside changes and is temporarily unpleasant, at least Modestine stays the same inside and we can easily forget what it is like out there when we are snugly comfortable within.

Monday 2nd July, Caen
We have been back in Caen for a couple of days now but have been so busy we have not found time to continue the blog. The really good news is that our new bank cards were waiting for us when we arrived and the bank has replaced all the money that was taken from our account back in early June.

On Saturday morning we left Rouen as quickly as we could and made our way through the rainy countryside towards Honfleur and our first sight and smell of the sea since we left Dubrovnik several weeks ago. Our route took us through the pretty Normandy countryside where picturesque pan de bois cottages nestled amongst the orchards, their thatched roofs planted with irises along the ridge to help keep them dry.

Thatched cottages, Seine Maritime
Just outside of the small fishing town of Honfleur we glimpsed the Pont de Normandy that crosses the Seine just before it enters the sea. In the meadows were the white cattle that are so typical of the countryside of northern France. No wonder Normandy produces such wonderful cheeses and butter. Throughout our travels the sight of animals grazing is something we have greatly missed.

Pont de Normandie near Honfleur, Seine Maritime
Honfleur is a tourist mecca but as it is so very pretty it is hardly surprising. It is within easy reach of England and has become a popular place for second homes. So there was almost as much English as French heard around the harbour where a street market was in progress and the terraces of the bars and bistros were crowded with visitors enjoying a break between the showers. Despite the tourists however, the town has remained a working community devoted to fishing and the main menus on offer reflected this with huge towers of fruits de mer on many of the tables, while other diners enjoyed moules et frîtes. Honfleur has long been famed for its mussel pickers, supplying Paris with most of its requirements. For our own lunch even we selected fish, enjoying sea salmon cooked in cream and onions served with rice and sprinkled with parsley. It looked and tasted wonderful even if we were still hungry afterwards.

Harbour at Honfleur
Quayside, Honfleur
Honfleur honours its mussel pickers
The main church in Honfleur is built from wood. Even the tiles on the roof and spire are made from wood. Indeed so are those of many of the tile hung buildings of the town. Others are attractively covered in slates.

Wooden church, Honfleur
As we strolled around some of the quieter back streets away from the harbour we discovered the house where the composer Erik Satie lived and worked. By now though the rain had returned and it was time to press on for the final part of our return across Europe to Caen and the usual warm welcome that is the reason we are always drawn back here.

Home of Erik Satie, Honfleur

Verdun

2007-07-05T09:58:00.000+01:00

Tuesday 26th June 2007, Verdun
Verdun was the epicentre of the very worst of the fighting between the French and the Germans during the First World War and we felt there was much to see and learn here.

The countries of Europe seem to have been ripe for war when the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914 but it takes a leap of imagination greater than we are capable of making to comprehend exactly how that act resulted in the living hell of the battles that took place in northern France over the following years. We are though, becoming all too aware of just how appalling it was for the soldiers on all sides fighting here. Essentially, in this area it was between the French and the Germans with the Americans joining the French towards the end of the conflict. British involvement was centred on the Somme.

This afternoon we drove through the battlefields north of Verdun. The area is now a huge memorial forest that has been allowed to grow over the site. The quiet little roads passing through it have monuments, graves, batteries, destroyed villages, small museums and cratered and pitted areas of land where the most intense fighting took place. We stopped at the former village of Fleury-devant-Douaumont, which woke up one snowy February morning in 1916 to discover it was right on the front line of battle with German troops entering the village. They were ordered to evacuate and as they did they passed the French troops coming up to the front line to engage with the Germans. Over the following twenty months control of the village changed hands sixteen times, sometimes on a daily basis. Not a building remained and the human carnage is incalculable. The overall death toll for the fighting around Verdun up to October 1917 is 800,000! Today the site of the village is covered by grass and woodland, the ground upturned, broken and pitted with pieces of wall and rubble showing through the grassy covering. The layout of the streets has been retained and signs indicate where the individual shops and houses once stood. There are hollows in the ground that were either shell craters, filled with rain water, or the remains of cellars beneath the original houses. Although it no longer exists, France still recognises it, ninety years on, and it has its own mayor and all its civic rights. There are a total of nine such villages in the area of the battlefields that found themselves on the front line of the fighting and have ceased to exist
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Verdun Memorial 1914-1918
In memory of of Fleury-devant-Douaumont
Fleury-devant-Douaumont as it once was
The same street today, Fleury-devant-Douaumont
It was getting late and we were freezing cold walking around the woods. We were also overawed by it all, frustrated at understanding so little about the causes of the war and horrified to imagine the incredible deprivation, misery, pain and loss of life on both sides. We decided there was no point in rushing to see everything this evening so found a nearby campsite for the night and we will return in the morning to see the rest of the battlefields and the cemetery.

It has been really cold and unpleasant today and it is hard to believe it is late June. We are far enough north in Europe now to pick up the BBC and have gathered from the news that there has been serious flooding in parts of Britain, so it seems others are having it far worse than we are. We have actually been grateful for Modestine's heater as we travelled today and it is hard to remember just how unbelievably hot we were down in Dubrovnik just a few weeks ago.

Wednesday 27th June 2007, Châlons-en-Champagne
Our campsite last night was cheap and basic but very conveniently situated for returning to the battlefields this morning. So early in the morning there were few people around and for once the rain was not falling so we could walk peacefully through the woods and clearings, now full of butterflies, wild flowers and grasses, the ground beneath pitted by shells and mortar fire, the craters filled with clear rainwater and bulrushes rather than the mud, blood and carnage of 1916. Millions of rounds of ammunition fell here during the battle, thousands were killed and many thousands more injured. The noise of battle was continuous, day and night. For us today though, this was one of the most peaceful and in some ways beautiful scenes imaginable. The only sounds were of birds and the humming of the bees amongst the clover, vetch and coltsfoot that cover the mounds where the guns, bunkers and observation towers of Fort Thiaumont can still be traced from pieces of jagged metal, reinforced iron bars, broken concrete, gun turrets and even the barrel of a canon sticking up from the earth. Throughout the day the single question we kept asking was "why"?

A walk through the battlefields, near Verdun
Smashed remains of solid metal, Fort Thiaumont near Verdun
Shell craters softened by nature, near Verdun
In the Tranchée des Baïonettes is a memorial to a group of soldiers, their bayonets fixed to their rifles, waiting in the trench for the command to advance. They were hit by mortar fire and died where they stood, buried upright as the trench caved in, leaving only the tops of a few bayonets protruding through the earth. They have been left there with just a few crosses and a concrete canopy to form the memorial.

Tranchée des Baïonettes, near Verdun
Entrance to the mass grave, Tranchée des Baïonettes, near Verdun
After the war, the bones of 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers were gathered from the battlefields and placed in a huge concrete ossuary with a high tower shaped like an artillery shell while around it were placed the bodies of a further 15,000 young French soldiers, each grave marked by a white cross and a red rose bush. We climbed to the top of the tower from where we could look out over the rolling countryside of Lorraine and down onto the open page of death, where each paragraph was spelled out with crosses.

Cimetière Nationale with ossuary and graves, near Verdun
War graves from the tower of the ossuary, near Verdun
There is only so much we felt we could cope with, though there are many more sites we could have visited. Returning down to Verdun we passed a monument to André Maginot, a hero of Verdun and later Minister of War, who proposed the construction of the Maginot line, a series of defences along the border with Germany in the 1930s. It was intended to hold back a possible German attack but in the 2nd World War Germany simply went round it.

Memorial to André Maginot, near Verdun
Verdun is a heavily fortified town with a massive citadel. After the annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine in the 1870s Verdun became a frontier town and the citadel was constructed as France's front line defence. Germany determined to take the strategic centre of Verdun at any cost. Had it succeeded it would have broken the morale of France but, thanks in great part to the intervention of America on the side of the French, Germany's advance was eventually halted and driven back.

Entrance to underground passages in the Citadel, Verdun
Everywhere in Verdun are statues and constant reminders of the past. It cannot be a very cheerful place in which to live but it is none the less rather a pleasant town on the banks of the River Meuse. Above the town stands the imposing cathedral dating from the 10th century with later alterations which was very badly damaged in the fighting. It has been restored almost exactly as it was though it is strange when looking at the capitals of some of the ancient columns to suddenly see, instead of angels, a soldier in a trench or a gun carriage. Near the cathedral stands the 18th century Episcopal Palace now housing the World Centre for Peace.

Replacement capital in the Cathedral crypt showing a cannon, Verdun
Episcopal Palace, Verdun
We moved on from Verdun around 4pm, travelling along the Voie Sacrée, the route between Bar-le-Duc and Verdun where it entered the town through the imposing medieval Porte Chausée. This road was the umbilical cord for the French at the front line, bringing in supplies of food, medicines, ammunition and fresh consignments of soldiers, while in the other direction the survivors, shell shocked and wounded, were carried away from the field of conflict.

Avenue de la Victoire, Verdun
Porte Chausée, Verdun
Gradually the countryside changed as we drove west. It became empty and flatter with fields stretching to the far horizon without a single building in sight. Soon we reached Châlons-en-Champagne and the campsite we were seeking. It's not very nice but the only one around. It claims to offer everything and charges accordingly, whether we want to use the facilities or not.

Nancy and Domremy

2007-07-04T10:21:00.000+01:00

Sunday 24th June 2007, Nancy, France
It has been a really lovely day and we are now back in France, exploring the eastern region of Lorraine, an area which, like Alsace, has alternated over the centuries between France and Germany.

It rained a great deal last night so it was with some relief that we left the campsite at Luxembourg as Modestine can be very difficult if her wheels start to spin on wet grass or mud. The roads were almost empty as we left the capital and made our way south, back into France for the first time in nearly three months leaving behind the clean, neat and tidy villages and countryside of Luxembourg and replacing them with the rather run-down, untidy villages of France with their broken road surfaces and vehicles parked just about anywhere except on the road.

We rejoined the Moselle, which had gained a couple of final letters since we left Germany, and passed the remains of what would have been a Roman aqueduct to rival the Pont du Gard, had it survived more completely. Originally it must have carried water high across the Moselle to the town of Metz but now only a few overgrown arches remain, along with basins at the spring which was once the source of the water supply, set amidst vegetable gardens and orchards. Nearby was a monument in German to soldiers who had died in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

Remains of a Roman aqueduct near Metz
Spring at the start of the Roman aqueduct near Metz
Memorial to Franco-Prussian war dead, near Metz
We stopped at the little town of Ars-sur-Moselle, where we joined a queue at the boulangerie for bread and croissants before joining the menfolk in the run-down PMU café overlooking the square for large cups of coffee which we drank with our own croissants. The sun had decided to put in an appearance and it was very pleasant just to sit and watch everyone shaking hands, patting each other on the back and smoking in the bar and at the terrace tables – in direct contravention of the EU directive issued just up the road in Luxembourg. Before moving on we went downstairs to use the facilities and realised we really and truly were back in France. How can a country pay such loving care and attention to what it takes into itself and so little to what comes out? Best not dwell on it!

We have been on a pilgrimage on behalf of all our eager readers who through our blogs have become addicted to the hobby of manhole cover spotting! Throughout Europe you will find covers bearing the inscription PAM. This stands for Pont-à-Mousson, almost certainly Europe's main producer, working from a very dated and ugly looking foundry on the river Moselle on the edge of the town. We asked directions from the man working in the supermarket and a happy smile spread over his face as he told us that the foundry had existed for very many years and had brought employment to the town with contracts from all over the world and an order book that is completely full for the next four years! There was little to see at the entrance to the huge complex, other than several young Algerian men clocking on for the Sunday shift. We searched the streets for some unique examples but met with no real success except for one very early and handsome inscribed specimen. The town itself is more agreeable than one would expect of an industrial centre with an attractive arcaded square and several churches. The old bridge which features as a trademark on the PAM covers was destroyed in 1944 and replaced.

Manhole cover foundry, Pont-à-Mousson
Early style manhole cover, Pont-à-Mousson
Main square, Pont-à-Mousson
By lunch time we were in Nancy, deep in the heart of Lorraine. Back at Lake Garda in April we met some English people who told us on no account to miss Nancy if we ever passed this way and gave us the address of a campsite. Our guidebook to France also sang its praises and not without reason as we soon discovered. It is a stunningly beautiful town and one that today was lively in the sunshine with crowds out enjoying the Parc de la Pépinière with its free zoo, or sitting at street cafes, or wandering the streets of the old town, or simply browsing the Sunday afternoon flea market and bookstalls in the Grande Rue outside the magnificently gothic ducal palace. Nancy should be high on every tourist's itinerary. It makes a wonderful place for a long weekend with so much happening.

Porte de la Graffe, Nancy
Grande Rue with Ducal Palace and street market, Nancy
Main doorway to the Ducal Palace, Nancy
Gateway on Place de la Carrière, Nancy
Bandstand in the Parc de la Pépinière, Nancy
Flags of the EU nations in the Parc de la Pépinière, Nancy
The most beautiful square in Europe is probably Place Stanislas here in Nancy. It is complete perfection and has been justifiably listed as a Unesco world heritage site. The beautifully proportioned square of 18th century buildings with its gilded railings and huge wrought iron gates was commissioned by the Duke of Lorraine, Stanislas Leszczynski from 1736, along with many other wonderful embellishments to the city where he held court and encouraged the arts, lavishly entertaining his guests. He was the father-in-law of the French King Louis XV and also king of Poland until he lost his throne, when he was given the dukedom of Lorraine in consolation by the French king.

Triumphal arch leading to Place Stanislas, Nancy
Place Stanislas, Nancy
Place Stanislas, Nancy
Statue of Stanislas and Hotel de Ville, Nancy
Near the square we found the cathedral, also commissioned by Stanislas. Built in the classical style with heavy embellishments, it at first seemed overpowering but it is certainly an impressive, perfectly proportioned building. It has a massive organ with over 4,000 pipes and as we wandered around the organist started playing at maximum volume that resounded around the cathedral, filling every space with an incredibly intense sound. He must really look forward to Sunday afternoon rehearsals, the power to make such a thunderous noise in exactly the space intended for it is awesome!

Cathedral, Nancy
Statue of Jeanne d'Arc, born in Lorraine, Cathedral, Nancy
Nancy also claims to be the place where the Art Nouveau movement began with several early examples around the town. We have been so impressed with the beauty and vivacity of the city that we have decided to spend another day here and explore it in greater depth tomorrow. Today we scratched the surface and the city shone gold in the sunlight. Clean, bright, lively, happy and bursting with culture we cannot wait to return tomorrow morning.

Art Nouveau building, rue St. Jean, Nancy
Iron framed Art Nouveau building, rue St. Jean, Nancy
After browsing the bookstalls, wandering through the park where children were feeding the goats and geese and a chimpanzee was demonstrating the correct way to eat an artichoke, we were weary enough to look out the recommended campsite. It does seem very good with trees to provide shade as it has turned hot again. We sat outside with our wine, surrounded as usual by dozens of Dutch camping vehicles. We were forced inside an hour ago when the rain began again. Thunder and lightening have joined in and we are back to the usual soggy weather. The little guidebook to the campsite we were given at reception listed any possible problems that might be encountered. Under "Flooding" it mentioned that if it were to happen we wouldn't be half as surprised as they would!

How Nancy managed to survive intact throughout the French Revolution, the Franco-Prussian wars and both World Wars we cannot understand, but thankfully it has, leaving Europe an architecturally richer and more beautiful place.

Monday 25th June 2007, Nancy, France
We gather that the weather has been dreadful in England too recently with serious flooding in Yorkshire. We did wonder after a night of torrential rain and thunder here whether we would find the campsite personnel wide-eyed with surprise and the campsite under water, but as we are on sandy soil on a hill high above the town, we just have lots of messy puddles that tread in and make the carpet oozy and unpleasant.

We braved the weather to take the bus down into town where we have spent the entire day and still feel there is much to see. We started by seeking out some of the early Art Nouveau buildings of which the town is justifiably proud. Mid-morning we stopped for a coffee outside at one of the smart cafés on Place Stanislas. Suddenly the rain returned so violently that the square looked as if it had a covering of mist where the rain bounced up from the cobbles. Several of the huge parasols blew over, overturning tables as they fell and soaking everyone with the deluge of rainwater that had gathered on them. We hastily moved inside to finish our coffee but others were drenched before they had chance to move.

As the rain was set for the day and the adjacent Musée des Beaux-Arts was open on Mondays we scuttled through the rain to next door where we shed our coats, deposited our bags and enjoyed a wonderful morning that only ended at 3pm when hunger forced us to leave in search of food.

Hotel de Ville seen from the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy
The museum contains some excellent works by artists of international renown including Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Rubens and Brueghel as well as French artists that include Delacroix, Courbet, Dufy, Doré, Monet, Manet, and Picasso. There is a separate museum of works from the late nineteenth and early 20th century School of Nancy but several excellent local artists were represented including Friant. There is also a good selection of sculptures including works by Rodin. The highlight in many ways was the discovery at the end of our visit of over 400 pieces of glass produced by the Nancy based firm of Daum. Pieces dated from the end of the 19th century, heralding the start of the Art Nouveau style, through the Art Deco period and on to modern contemporary items, amongst which were designs commissioned from Salvador Dali. Each item was individually designed and produced, usually in vibrant colours using a range of different techniques, decorated with scenes from nature - leaves, flowers, berries, brambles, fruits or vines. They were either fused into the glass, moulded onto it or etched into it. Items displayed included lamps, tall vases, dishes and pots with lids. None could have been intended for use though the company also produced a range of high quality domestic tableware decorated with a liberal use of gold.

Daum glass collecton, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy
Daum glass vases, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy
After exploring a few more of the city streets we decided it was too wet to linger so took the bus back to the campsite and made use of the internet point in reception. We also cooked a hot meal in Modestine for the first time in ages. It is good to be back in a country where all food does not come sausage shaped and there is a good range of products that can be easily prepared in an extremely small camping car in the rain.

Tuesday 26th June 2007, Verdun

No comment!
The paragraph below is brilliantly contrived but will probably only be appreciated by those of you who either love or loathe the musical The sound of music.

The region of Lorraine is very proud of its local heroine, Jeanne d'Arc who was born in the village of Domrémy on the banks of the Meuse in the department of Vosges. This morning we looked on the map and we didn't think Domrémy far, so late to go as it was, we finally set off in the rain. There was a rising scale of excitement as we passed a female deer, but it rained all morning and we saw not one drop of golden sun! We discovered it was farther than we thought and was a long, long way to run, sew we didn't arrive until nearly lunch time when we had tea, to drink with ham and bread outside the basilica, just above the village. We then returned down the same road which brought us back to Domrémy.

Domrémy is a small rural village like hundreds of others in Lorraine. Here, around 1429 the seventeen year old Jeanne d'Arc heard voices urging her to unite the disparate factions of the French army in their campaign against the English in the One Hundred Years War. She achieved phenomenal success but became an acute embarrassment to the Church who had no wish for ordinary people to claim direct communication with the saints, bypassing the Church. She also became a problem for both the French and the English and because of her refusal to recant was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431 and was eventually canonised in 1920. She has become something of a cult figure and her life has captured the imagination of writers and artists around the world with plays written by George Bernard Shaw in England, Friedrich Schiller in Germany and Jean Anouilh in France. She was also famously depicted in a painting by Dante Gabrielle Rosetti.

The village was wet and deserted when we arrived and we were able to wander freely around the house in which she was born before exploring an exhibition of the European perspective on her life. At midday we had to leave as everywhere closed for two hours. So we drove up to the rather ugly Romanesque basilica above the village, built in dedication to her. It commanded lovely views of the valley of the Meuse and inside had huge wall paintings depicting major scenes from her life. In the crypt there was a chapel of remembrance to the soldiers of the Vosges who died in the First World War.

Home of Jeanne d'Arc, Domremy
Bronze statue of Jeanne d'Arc inside her home, Domremy
Village church where Jeanne was christened, Domremy
Basilica, Domremy
Jeanne d'Arc sees a vision of Modestine, Domremy
After a picnic lunch in Modestine we returned through the village and continued our journey northwards through a very pleasant countryside to Verdun.

Luxembourg

2007-07-03T13:21:00.000+01:00

Friday 22nd June 2007, Kockelscheuer, Luxembourg
We are on a very wet campsite on the edge of the city that is the hub of the European Community and also this year's European Capital of Culture.

We left Saarburg this morning in the rain and it has continued wet for most of the day. At Nennig we stopped to visit the scant remains of a Roman villa where there is little more than a beautifully preserved mosaic floor to the main room. Dating from the 3rd century AD it depicts mainly gladiatorial scenes and is virtually complete.

Mosaics of gladiators, Nennnig
We crossed almost immediately into the country of Luxembourg, founded by Siegfried, Count of the Ardennes in 963. The Mosel at this point forms the boundary with Germany. We did not really know what to expect as this is our first visit to Luxembourg but were surprised to discover that French is definitely the dominant language. The transition was immediate, though in the capital German and English are heard almost as frequently as French. We've also heard people speaking Luxemburgish which looks and sounds very like Dutch to us.

At Bettenbourg we bought a couple of quiches Lorraine for lunch and discovered by chance at the baker's that people quite happily switch languages without actually being aware they have done so. Having asked in French for our quiche, we then selected a coiled iced bun called a Schnecke (snail) and the conversation switched to German. Somehow we then ended up speaking English and as we left we went back into French.

When we reached the campsite, about six kilometres from the city centre, we picnicked in the rain while we waited for the campsite to reopen after its statutory two hour lunch break! First impressions indicate that camping is considerably cheaper here than in Germany and diesel is only about 65 pence a litre.

The country of Luxembourg is about 70 kilometres north to south and 40 east to west. It has around 450,000 inhabitants of which well over a quarter live in the capital. The little towns out in the countryside that we have seen today have been clean and well built but are too small and smart to seem particularly interesting. The capital makes up for this and with an excellent transport infrastructure it is within easy reach for everyone. Travelling into the city for a preliminary look this afternoon we were the only passengers on the bus. The driver told us the motorway was blocked and there were diversions all around the city as tomorrow is National Day with all sorts of things going on in the city. The bus route was diverted but he dropped us near the city centre with directions as to how to find the main commercial area.

Welcome to Luxembourg
Luxembourg is clean, interesting, lively and beautiful. Today it was also very noisy. Apart from the hourly clanging of bells from various churches, there were street bands with amplifiers setting up at various points around the city and as we reached the Ducal Palace we encountered crowds waiting to watch the changing of the guard at 4pm. This is accompanied with a great deal of razzmatazz from the military band. Having marched through the streets the band and fresh consignment of guards march and parade up and down outside the main entrance, then, as the guards change, the band plays very unlikely military music, today's choice being an extremely lively rumba which had the crowds, but unfortunately not the guards, jigging to the rhythm.

Ducal Palace with guards in need of changing, Luxembourg
Changing the guard, showing Chamber of Deputies, Luxembourg
It is a pity about the rain as a lot of activity is expected to celebrate the eve of the nation's special day. Restaurants were laying tables under dripping umbrellas with seafood menus starting at 50 euros a head plus 15 euros for drinks. At the other end of the scale, there were dozens of street stalls setting up to sell take-away filled baguettes, grilled sausages and chips and lots and lots of beer. It should be quite a party, and we can even hear the fireworks from the campsite as we write this!

The pedestrianised streets looked smart with bright, fashionable window displays which were very pleasant to stroll through. In the Place d'Armes we stopped to watch some Polish folk dancers in colourful costumes - some of the EC's newest members invited to entertain the citizens of the Community's capital as part of its celebrations.

Near the Place d'Armes we discovered a small square dedicated to Jan Palach, the Czech student who died by setting fire to himself as a protest for the treatment of his country following the invasion by Warsaw Pact forces in 1968. It struck a chord with us as there is a remembrance plaque to him in Wenceslas Square in Prague at the monument to the victims of Communism.

Polish dancers on the Place d'Armes, Luxembourg
Plaque to Jan Palach, Place d'Armes, Luxembourg
It being Friday afternoon we headed for the National Library as it will be closed tomorrow. Inside we found an exhibition from the library's collections on Humanist writers from Luxembourg in the 16th and 17th centuries. The main thing to emerge from the display was that it was very hard to be a humanist within Luxembourg because of the inflexible attitude of the Archbishopric of Trier, so they had to move elsewhere to write their works. We also explored the reference collections where catalogues, bibliographies, dictionaries and encyclopaedias have to be provided in four languages. We discovered the reading room with today's leading newspapers from all the major European countries and settled down to read the Times – it's a real treat when we can get our hands on an English newspaper. Unfortunately we were thrown out early today as everywhere was closing because of the national holiday celebrations.

Just across from the National Library stands the Cathedral. Inside is a wide central aisle and a very pretty altar. What fascinated us though was that there was a large man gliding across the floor in front of the altar holding a huge white balloon on the end of a piece of string while bright floodlights have been suspended from the roof making normally dark corners glaringly bright. We have concluded that in recognition for outstanding service to the country, one happy Luxemburger is selected each year and permitted to float a balloon in the cathedral on their national day!

National Library and Cathedral, Luxembourg
The balloon goes up in the Cathedral, Luxembourg
Our wanderings took us through very pleasant gardens down to the older part of the town and to a promontory overlooking the deep gorge of the Pétrusse, spanned by a railway viaduct and a very attractive arched road bridge. Within the gorge lies a green, wooded park with footpaths through, right in the heart of the city, while on the far side are some splendid 19th century buildings as well as many recent buildings connected with the European Community. Tomorrow we will investigate everything further but our first impression has been very positive indeed.

Pont Adolphe over the gorge of the Pétrusse, Luxembourg
Saturday 23rd June 2007, Kockelscheuer, Luxembourg
It rained heavily all night and this morning the entire campsite was waterlogged. Imagine the mud as dozens of caravanners slithered about hitching their caravans to their 4x4s. At least they could get off their pitches but the mess they left behind was horrid.

Leaving Modestine looking pathetic and wet in a sea of mud we stopped at the office on our way into the city to buy some more bus tickets – only to discover that because it is the country's National Day, it is a public holiday and there are no buses!! The thought of spending the day cooped up in Modestine in the rain lacked charm so we decided to risk driving into the city and trying to park. This proved far easier than we imagined as there was little traffic around, most of the Luxembourgeoisie obviously sleeping off the effects of last night's celebrations. The streets were clean and there was no evidence that crowds had been thronging the streets of the capital attending a massive firework celebration until 3am.

We had expected lots of events and excitement in the centre today but everywhere was wet, the rain drizzled relentlessly and even the cafes and little food shops were closed. There were more police on the streets than tourists. Near the Cathedral we were cordoned off while men in morning suits ran through the rain carrying white umbrellas. Nearby we discovered the personal car of Luxembourg's Archduke Henri complete with chauffeur. Realising something that might just be interesting was going on, we hung around in the rain until he drove off round to the front entrance to the Cathedral. We followed just in time to see the Archduke himself and his wife Marie Terese shaking hands with the bishop at the end of a special National Day church service. It was rather exciting though to be in the right place at the right time and see Luxembourg's equivalent to the Royal Family at such close quarters! We bring you the cream of Europe's aristocracy - why it was only recently we presented you a first hand account and photos of Bratislava's resident President! They smiled and waved and Ian was so excited his hand shook so the pictures turned out all wobbly which is a great shame.

Grand Duke's car and chauffeur outside the National Library, Luxembourg
Grand Duke Henri with his wife Marie Terese outside the Cathedral, Luxembourg
The official photo seen in many shop windows, Luxembourg
Even the dogs are patriotic here, Luxembourg
By now we were in need of drying out and some restorative coffee at the Café de Paris on the Place d'Armes where the elderly waiters look like something from the era of Marcel Proust with bow ties, black waist coats, watch chains and silver salvers. The coffee was excellent however and as the rain teamed down we read the Luxembourg daily newspaper – in French so at last Jill can understand things again after weeks of Italian, Croatian, Czech, Hungarian and German! It was mainly about Luxembourg finance – this country must be SO rich! It did though include a heart warming account of a teenage hacker who had entered the Belgian police website and left them a message suggesting they tightened up their security!

Outside we heard the thunder of a 21 gun salute echoing along the city gorge from canons fired from the military casemates. Archduke Henri must find the adoration of his citizens a mixed blessing when they insist on playing military rumbas outside his window every afternoon, ring carillons hourly, hold wild street parties and seize on any excuse to play with their canons. At first Jill simply thought it was a rather powerful pigeon deterrent but Ian scampered off through the steep cobbled streets of the old town down to the bridge with its casemates overlooking the river Alzette, the old military hospital and the remaining towers of the 18th century fort and walls built by Vauban who seems to have held the European monopoly on military architecture at that time. We couldn't actually locate the canons but the noise was pretty impressive. Next we discovered a special review of the forces and emergency services. Military bands, the army, the police, fire services and the Customs and Excise were moving in formation slowly across the Pont Adolophe, flanked by motorcycle outriders, past a grandstand where various dignitaries were assembled. Just beyond and out of sight they all abandoned their musical instruments in favour of cigarettes and mobile phones!

View from the casemates showing the church of St. John and city ramparts, Luxembourg
Military hospital seen from the casemates, Luxembourg
Railway viaduct with European Centre behind, Luxembourg
At ease after the march-past, Luxembourg
We found ourselves at the railway station, a magnificent building that resembled a baroque French chateau. By now we were feeling rather hungry so were overjoyed to discover the station restaurant was serving an excellent dish of the day – braised beef with potatoes and broad beans in a creamy herb sauce – for seven euros.

Railway station, Luxembourg
Returning to Modestine we drove across the city to the centre of the European Community on the northern edge of Luxembourg. Here everything is new and architecturally very modern, being massive slabs of glass and concrete. Because all the buildings are set in their own campus it is very acceptable and we quite liked it. A similar building in the centre of an historic city (such as Exeter) however is as out of scale and aesthetically unacceptable as a row of semi detached houses would be constructed between the European Court of Justice and the European Investment Bank.

The area was deserted. Eurocrats were more than happy to join in with the local celebrations if it meant a day off from legislating on the standard time for waiting at traffic lights – currently set at three times what is necessary. We parked outside the European Court of Human Rights and walked off to discover the Jean Monet building, returning soaking wet to Modestine who'd been watching a tent placed opposite the main entrance to the Court covered in protests demanding the right to euthanasia.

European Court of Justice, Luxembourg
Protesters outside the European Court of Justice, Luxembourg
Jean Monnet building, Luxembourg
Chamber of Commerce, Luxembourg
During the afternoon we drove away from the city to explore something of the countryside of Luxembourg, making our way north to the town of Diekirch. This was a pleasant enough place if we'd happened to chance on it as we travelled through, but as we'd driven a round trip of 60 kilometres to reach it we found it rather a disappointment with nothing much there except the very pleasant mediaeval church of St.Laurence and a small pedestrianised shopping precinct that was completely closed up for the day.

St. Laurence Church, Diekirch, Luxembourg
Ian insists that we are not judging Luxembourg fairly as the weather is bad and it is a public holiday. Jill says Egon Ronay turns up unexpectedly to assign stars to restaurants and if it happens to be a bad day, then tough luck. So we are not quite in agreement about how interesting Luxembourg is as a country, but if Ian chooses to come again, he will probably need to find himself another chauffeur.

The campsite we decided to head for on our way south towards France turned out not to exist so we have been obliged to return to the same one we used yesterday which is now even more wet and muddy. That is something the campsite cannot help however and generally it is well managed with clean facilities, free showers that really work and at 14 euros inclusive of electricity, so near a capital city it is really good value.

Rhine and Moselle

2007-07-02T10:06:00.000+01:00

Monday 18th June 2007, Cochem on the Mosel
We have added one more country to our tally – the Free State of Bottleneck. This morning when we bought a couple of bottles of wine from the campsite/vineyard owner he explained that we'd actually been staying in an independent state which for several years in the 1920s had led a separate existence from the rest of Germany! After WW1 it appears that, in order that the allied powers had a bridgehead east of the Rhine, three semicircles with a radius of 30 Km were drawn on the map centred on Cologne (British sector), Koblenz (American sector) and Mainz (French sector). What was not considered was that the arcs of the last two semicircles met but did not intersect, leaving a bottleneck shaped area centred on Lorch to the east of the Rhine which was completely cut off from the rest of Germany. An independent free state Freistaat Flaschenhals, was established with its own currency which managed to exist by selling its wines, by smuggling and on one occasion, stealing a train loaded with coal from the Ruhr Valley intended for France from a railway siding at Rüdesheim, bringing welcome winter warmth to the inhabitants of Flaschenhals. At night the French trained lights across the Rhine in an attempt to stop smuggling. The young men of "Bottleneck" on the opposite bank would line up along the riverside with their trousers around their knees making moonies at the searchlights as a sign of defiance.

Wine label of the revived Freistaat Flaschenhals, Lorch
The government buildings of the Freistaat Flaschenhals, Lorch
After a breakfast of fresh rolls specially ordered for us we reluctantly left this wonderful campsite and made our way down through the steeply sloping vineyards to the riverbank. We intended to travel downstream on the far bank as we would be passing the Lorelei cliff, which can only be seen from across the river. There were no bridges until Koblenz but several ferries take cars across at different points. As we reached the ferry at Lorch we saw it pulling away from the bank. The pilot also saw us so turned the ferry around and came back for us! It turned out we were the only passengers but he runs to a timetable so crosses with or without passengers! Modestine stood small and alone on the deck as once again the ferry swung dizzily around, swept by the fast flowing current, and slowly struggled across the Rhine, passing behind an island to deposit us fifteen minutes later on the further bank.

Modestine crosses the Rhine, Lorch
The vineyards round our campsite seen from the ferry, Lorch
Our day has been very happy and relaxed. Although it is such an important thoroughfare, with many barges plying the river, and major roads and railways along each bank, the roads were almost deserted and we could take our time to admire the towns, castles and other sights along the Rhine. At Kaub there is a remarkable structure in the middle of the river, the Pfalzgrafenstein, erected in 1326 to exact tolls from shipping. At the Lorelei, the narrowest point on this section of the Rhine, the river flows fast and turbulent around the steep, projecting cliff where a beautiful maiden or siren was said to lure people to their death. We parked in the little town of St. Goar and walked back to watch the river as it flowed around the rock. With the recent rains the river level was high and the water muddy and brown. Enormous long barges struggled upstream against the flow, heavily laden and so low in the water we wondered how they stayed afloat. There were usually only a couple of people on board, fore and aft. We assume they communicated by mobile phone! They used the width of the river to navigate their way through the powerful currents around the rock. There were also many passenger ships taking visitors through and we remembered how many years ago we travelled this route by boat downstream from Mainz to Koblenz.

Pfalzgrafenstein, Kaub
Lorelei, St Goarshausen
Barge struggling up the Rhine
Burg Katz, a typical Rhine Valley castle
We made our way along the riverbank down to Koblenz where the Mosel and the Rhine meet. We never discovered the campsite on the outskirts of the city before we found ourselves heading down the Mosel. We continued along this very beautiful, more tranquil river, the hillsides to either side covered in the bright green vines that create the famed white wines of the region. Our progress has been slow as we have stopped to explore several little towns and also to climb up the steep valley sides to the plateau above where a wide, gently undulating landscape of ripening cereals stretches to the horizon, a complete contrast to the deep, green gorge we had just left. The area between the Rhine and the Mosel is known as the Hunsrück. It was the setting for the epic German television production Heimat or Homeland. We watched much of this when it was shown on British television some years ago and the landscape was very much as we remembered it.

Eventually we reached our destination, Burg Eltz, reputed to be one of the most beautiful castles in Germany, a country with a surfeit of stunning buildings. We parked in the woods above and walked steeply down to emerge on a track above the castle which rose vertically from a rock in the middle of a meander of the small river Eltzbach, surrounded by high hills. It would have been an excellent site for defence back in 1157 when it was first recorded. It was also spectacularly beautiful with turrets, towers and pinnacles.

Burg Eltz, Moselkern
The toilet block, Burg Eltz, Moselkern
Courtyard, Burg Eltz, Moselkern
Driving back down from the plateau to rejoin the Mosel valley was a slow, steep and winding descent but we could take our time as there was little traffic about. We'd expected the area to be packed with tourists but most travel by coach or river it seems.

This evening we reached the little town of Cochem where we are staying on a campsite beside the river. Last night has spoilt us however and this seems mediocre by comparison. However, we have a couple of bottles of Riesling from the free state of Bottleneck in the fridge so the evening is unlikely to drag.

We have just phoned our French friends Stéphane and Cathérine who live on the border between France, Germany and Luxembourg. Stéphane is the elder son of our friends Joël and Danielle from Guissény in Brittany and is in the French army, stationed in the eastern part of France. We had hoped to see the family before they set off on their holiday but we are not going to be able to make it in time.

Tuesday 19th June 2007, Saarburg
Our day has turned out differently than anticipated, due almost entirely to an unexpected road diversion that forced us up from the gentle level route running through the vineyards and little towns that lie along the banks of the Mosel, to the rolling fields, dark forests and views stretching to infinity that form the landscape of the Hünsruck. We are staying on a really lovely campsite with shaded pitches to protect us from the wicked sunshine which is again well into the 30s. Saarburg lies near the borders with both Luxembourg and France and we like it so much we are considering spending several days here.

We left last night's campsite with few regrets. We'd been disappointed to discover that the price quoted for staying, which seemed reasonable, failed to mention extras such as an obligatory charge for rubbish disposal, even if you left no rubbish, an additional charge for electricity and a further charge for unlocking the electricity cupboard when you left so you could have your lead back. There was also a charge for using the showers and hot water was not provided at most of the wash basins. All told there was 6.50 euros of additional charges not included in the quoted price which Jill at least thought was dishonest.

Cochem proved to be a pleasant little town bustling with tourists and crammed with souvenir shops and restaurants. The closely packed streets did offer welcome shade and apart from boat trips on the Mosel, there is also a chair lift to the cliff top to entertain the visitors. For us though, the most curious thing was a painting in the entrance to the town hall showing goats being squashed in a wine press, their blood flowing out and being used to make red wine! It was all rather macabre and we failed to discover its significance.

The coat of arms of Cochem
Market place, gate tower and town hall, Cochem
The landscape along the Mosel really is very beautiful with nothing anywhere to jar. The little towns are placed exactly where they should be to add beauty to a fold in the hills or a curve of the river. Such perfection is almost too much. We have been driving for much of the day and the landscape has been exactly the same – steep rugged cliffs covered in bright green vines planted at such a steep angle we cannot see how they can be harvested. Below runs the smooth silver snake of the river. Nothing seems to move. It is too hot for people to work on their vines and unlike the Rhine, the river is not used for moving commercial freight. Even the tourist boats seem quite rare on much of the river. The main sign of life is the doughty Dutch tourist on his bicycle. Holland really must be empty as there are hundreds of them slowly peddling their bikes along the river bank in the hot sun. Generally if you sat on a bench beside the water and took in the perfection of the view, there would be no real need to travel further as you would have seen everything the Mosel has to offer. For interest the Rhine must win but for beauty the Mosel almost certainly has the edge.

Picnic by the Mosel near Cochem
Vineyards along the Mosel valley
Germany is a European leader in devising the Umleitung or road diversion. They pop up everywhere, sending you off into the wilds of the countryside, sometimes for many miles. They are rarely properly signposted and it's easy to get totally lost. Being charitable it is possible we missed a warning sign, but somehow we found our way blocked at Bernkastel and were diverted through a steep tunnel which came out onto a very steep, twisting road with no possibility of turning round and with Modestine's temperature gauge rising rapidly. By the time we reached the top there was no way we were turning round to burn out our brakes going back down. In any case we had seen enough of the Mosel landscape for a while. So we readjusted our plans and continued across the Hünsruck countryside where from time to time we even saw cattle in the fields though mostly the landscape was given over to cereals and woodland.

There was a campsite marked on our map but when we arrived it was expensive and isolated from anywhere, so we continued to this one at Saarburg. We've just been talking to one of the Dutch campers staying here who tells us we ought to visit Holland next as it will be really peaceful on the campsites as every Dutch camper is off seeing Europe using special concessions provided by the Dutch camping association.

Wednesday 20th June 2007, Saarburg
We are still at the same campsite. It is so pleasant and within easy cycling distance of the town centre and railway station so we have decided to give ourselves a little holiday from all the hard work we are doing! Last night there was a frighteningly violent thunderstorm. We were woken by Thunder and Lightening hammering at the door to see if Rain could come out to play at 5am.

By breakfast time the trio had worn themselves out and disappeared to sleep off their hangover. At 8am the baker came up from the town with a van piled high with croissants, fresh rolls, sticky buns and a large pile of today's Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. We joined the end of a queue of campers, all wearing clogs, patiently waiting to be served. We discovered we knew more Dutch in those few minutes than we'd ever realised. It really is a toy language being a mixture of German and English. We later picked up a Dutch romantic novel in the kitchen and were wiping our eyes with laughter at just how English it seemed to be. (They no doubt do the same with English books thinking how like Dutch they are!) Almost everyone on this site is Dutch and they are all lovely. Many of them chat in English, a few use German but often they simply talk in Dutch and we discover we are actually having meaningful conversations! This evening we risked everything and joined a Dutch couple to watch a football match on their portable TV. It was England versus Holland. After 15 minutes of extra time Holland won 13-12. It was fortunate for us as we are the only English here and we risked being drummed off the site if England had won! As it is they are all being very magnanimous about it.

We spent the morning chilling out with a leisurely breakfast, sorting out a backlog of photos, answering emails and preparing another blog for the web. In between we drank lots of coffee and ate croissants. In the afternoon we unleashed Hinge and Bracket and cycled through the fields down into the little town of Saarburg. The town is the capital of the Saar winegrowing district and the neatly kept vineyards slope steeply down at the very edge of the town. There is more to see than we imagined with a castle overlooking the river Saar where pleasure boats carry passengers from town to town. The castle was built by Siegfried of Luxembourg in the tenth century and later passed into the ownership of the Archbishops of Trier. The top of the tower, reached by a spiral staircase, gives lovely views of the town and the surrounding hillsides covered in vines. Back down in the town again we discovered a 20 metre high waterfall right in the centre. In the 13th century the little river Leuk had been diverted to work mills and machinery in the town. Today it offers a picturesque location for street cafés where Dutch visitors park their bikes and enjoy ice creams or Kaffee und Kuchen. We also discovered a chair lift taking people up to the woods on the nearby hilltop. We however, had a huge pile of work to do so headed for the local internet shop where we spent nearly two hours on the computers. Although we are retired and are swanning about Europe, going with the flow and seeing where life takes us, recording all this takes a great deal of time. We said today that we felt we had both worked harder than if we had been at work! There is far more pleasure though when doing it for oneself. The blog will be a wonderful memory for us and the messages to and from friends are what makes it all worth while for us. They bring us so much pleasure.

Vineyards sweep right down to the town, Saarburg
Bell foundery and pleasure boat on the Saar, Saarburg
Castle keep at Saarburg
Waterfall and mill leat in the centre of the town of Saarburg
Peaceful riverside cafés just above the waterfall, Saarburg
Finally we cycled across town to the railway station to find out train times for a trip to Trier tomorrow. We intended visiting it today as we passed along the Mosel but after being diverted yesterday we will have to make a special trip there tomorrow instead. We have been emailed by our friend Ralph ordering us not to miss it, and orders is orders. Apart from it being the birthplace of Karl Marx it is reputed to have Roman remains and there are currently three exhibitions on Constantine Ian hopes to visit.

Back at the campsite this evening we decided to use the little on-site restaurant for the dish of the day. It was Schnitzel with asparagus wrapped in ham and topped with a cheese sauce, served with chips and salad. It would have been nice except that it arrived ready sprinkled with salt which quite spoilt it. Incidentally, there is an asparagus crisis in Germany at the moment. They are mad about it here and generally use migrant workers to cut it in the fields. Recent employment laws have made it prohibitively expensive to use imported labour so the asparagus is rotting in the fields while demand is being met by importing it from Poland.

One of the things we like about this site is the animals. There is a little pond with large fish and very small, pretty ducks as well as a few large terrapins. There is also an aviary of parrots, budgies, canaries and quails, while several Dutch lop-eared rabbits (you can tell by their clogs) with an identity crisis, lollop around the floor wondering why they can't sing, fly or climb on branches.

All friends together, campsite, Saarburg
Thursday 21tst June 2007, Saarburg
Well, today saw us at the railway station in good time for the train. We double padlocked Hinge and Bracket to the railings and left them with slight misgivings. They have been eyed with so much envy here and someone told us folding bikes are very expensive in Germany. Our anxiety turned out to be well founded for when we returned we found someone trying the padlocks on all the bikes. Ian got riled and accosted him with a tirade in German and the man turned and slouched off. Our bikes were quite safe, he was just trying his luck, but the bike he was tampering with wasn't locked properly. The owner got off the same train just behind us and but for Ian would have lost his bike.

We've had a mixed day. Although we set off in bright sunshine in tee shirts, shorts and sandals we were soon wet and shivering with heavy showers all day. The train ride along beside the river Saar between Saarburg and Trier is very pretty, passing along a steep-sided valley entirely dedicated to viticulture. Trier is a city of 100,000 and claims to be the oldest city in Germany, founded by Augustus in 16BC with Roman remains dating from the second to the fourth centuries. The Emperor Diocletian made Trier an important centre of the Roman world and when Constantine became emperor he ruled from Trier from 306 to 316. There are currently three exhibitions about Constantine in the city to mark Luxembourg and its environs currently holding the title of European Capital of Culture. Between the showers we visited the main Roman sites including two different sets of baths, the huge, blackened city gate, the massive brick-built Aula Palatina constructed as a palace for Constantine and a bridge across the Mosel, still in active use today.

Imperial Baths, Trier
Porta Nigra dating from the second century, Trier
Interior of the Aula Palatina, now a church, Trier
Roman bridge seen through the rain, Trier
Of course on the way we also took in the beautiful town square with its market cross, fountain and restored buildings dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. In the old town baroque buildings were juxtaposed with those of the Art Nouveau period. It is a pleasant city, full of interesting architecture, but the weather did not really allow us to do it justice. Ian was delighted with the Roman aspect of the town and visited the main Constantine exhibition with 1,500 exhibits from a range of museums across Europe. Over the past few weeks however, Jill's interest in things Roman and ecclesiastical has waned rather. After paddling through the wet streets today, following Ian as he strode along, map in hand, searching for the remains of Roman bath houses, she decided she'd had enough. So while Ian went off to the special exhibition, Jill spent a couple of hours simply looking around the town at her own pace, pottering through shops for the first time in over two months, and enjoying not having to struggle with understanding German texts about topics in which she is far less knowledgeable or enthusiastic than Ian. At a practical level, it's possible to learn just as much vocabulary in a department store as in a museum and being able to ask where one can try on a garment is possibly of more practical use than understanding long academic texts about the archaeological and historical records of the Roman remains to be found in the town.

Market Square with Pythonesque foot of Constantine, Trier
Fountain in the Market Square, Trier
Art nouveau façade, Trier
Electoral Palace, Trier
Trier also boasts an impressive but rather unwelcoming cathedral with a strange mixture of architectural styles covering some 1500 years. Here we dutifully filed past a glass case set back in a flamboyant, heavy setting in which was supposedly the Holy Robe, made without any seams. It is supposed to have been worn by Christ but how or why, or even if, it was made in one piece, we don't know. Constantine's mother is supposed to have brought back various items of religious significance from her travels, including part of the true cross, so presumably she was responsible for it being there. The gothic cloisters were more traditional and very pleasing with a pretty garden at the centre where recent bishops and clergy are buried.

Romanesque façade of the Cathedral, Trier
In the Cathedral cloisters, Trier
Closing time in the library, monument in the Cathedral, Trier
Of course we went in search of the birthplace of Karl Marx. The house is now a museum and is one of the prettiest houses in the town. It is very bourgeois and not quite the sort of home one expects for the father of Socialism. The town is almost as proud of him as it is of Constantine, and Karl Marx Wurst were selling in special vacuum-packed bags for easy transport across the world as souvenirs and gifts! The day seems to have passed very quickly despite the rain, and it was 6pm by the time we made our way back to the station each with our different impressions of the town.

Birthplace of Karl Marx, Trier

Fulda and Frankfurt

2007-06-25T16:41:00.000+01:00

Saturday 16th June 2007, Frankfurt am Main
This morning we visited the very pleasant town of Fulda, a place of 60,000 inhabitants. It has links with Devon which explains why we came. St. Boniface is the patron saint of the town where he spent much of his life and founded a Benedictine monastery. He was born in Crediton, Devon and educated in Exeter during the 7th century. He set out to convert the inhabitants of the Germanic area to Christianity and ended up being martyred in Friesland in 754 by being hacked about with an axe. To protect himself he held a copy of the Bible above his head. The actual book is preserved in the library in Fulda and our next mission should have been to find it. However, today is Saturday and we discovered that the library will not be open again until Monday. Our journey has not been wasted though and we have spent a really enjoyable day around the town. Boniface is buried in the crypt of the 18th century baroque cathedral so we have seen that, as well as the circular church of St. Michael, dating from the early ninth century where some lovely early wood carvings, probably dating from the 13th or 14th century can be seen. Unfortunately photography was not allowed, so no pictures.

Statue of St. Boniface of Crediton, Fulda

Martyrdom of St. Boniface, Fulda

Tomb of St. Boniface, Fulda

18th century baroque cathedral, Fulda

9th century church of St. Michael, Fulda
Fulda seems a very religious town. There were services taking part in every one of its churches as we arrived so our visits were restricted. Most were baroque and quite honestly we wonder whether Boniface would have approved of so much wealth and grandeur. We have to admit though that they were magnificent buildings, white rendered inside to offset the extravagant gold decoration of the altars and side chapels.

Interior of the Cathedral, Fulda

Seminary building, Fulda

Seminary doorway, Boniface holds the bible pierced by the weapon that killed him, Fulda
Amongst the equally attractive secular buildings the baroque palace of the Prince Abbots is of particular note. We didn't see around inside but the gardens are lovely with statues, cherubs and several fountains sending magnificent water displays high into the air. Today the gardens were full of wedding couples with photographers recording their happy day. It is obviously the "In" place for newly weds and there were so many of them it has been impossible to completely exclude them from our photos! They will probably never know that they are on the internet!

Palace of Prince Abbots, Fulda

Palace of the Prince Abbots seen across the gardens, Fulda

One rather pretty palace staircase, Abbots' Palace, Fulda

Orangery in the Palace gardens, Fulda
Last year in Graz (Austria) we discovered a very nice fish restaurant (Nordsee) that is part of a chain that also has a branch in Fulda. So today we enjoyed a lunch that was vaguely like fish and chips with lemon and tartar sauce except it also had yogurt coated mixed salad and instead of chips we were served crunchy fried potatoes with bits of bacon in.

Around 3pm, having seen at least the main sights of Fulda we addressed the less agreeable task of navigating our way along the German motorways towards Bad Homburg. We felt we had a duty to visit this town as it is twinned with Exeter but it does mean we get sucked into the massive German conglomeration comprising the towns of Franfurt, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Offenbach and Hanau. We are now on a campsite where the only positive thing we can say about it is that there is a convenient train link into the centre of Frankfurt in one direction and Bad Homburg in the other. Jill has moaned and grumbled about the unpleasantness of coping with German motorways and weaving her way through countless sets of red traffic lights and urban sprawl while Ian has patiently coped by pouring out several glasses of the local Dornfelder Rheinhessen to pacify her. We've now decided to stop being disciplined about planning what we do tomorrow and watch a video instead.

Sunday 17th June 2007, Lorch an Rhein
We are now camped on a really wonderful site on the slopes of the Rhine Valley south of Koblenz. From Modestine we can look down over the steep vine-clad hillside to the river where long barges chug their way slowly upriver heavily laden with crates and containers. Along either side of the river runs the railway line carrying passengers on intercity trains or long freight trains pulling up to 50 trucks as they snake along the water's edge, winding their way around the base of the steep wooded slopes of the far bank of the river.

We have done an enormous amount today and things have not turned out at all how we expected. We woke early and by 9am we were in the centre of Frankfurt having bought an all day freedom ticket to the entire Frankfurt transport system. We can now officially announce that the dullest place in all of Europe is Frankfurt city centre on a Sunday morning. The silence of the city was eerie as we came up from the scruffy underground station to emerge into Willy Brand Platz dominated by the massive glass tower blocks of the European Central Bank, the Main Tower and several other multinational financial institutions. At first it was exciting. We walked through the empty streets expecting always to find the throbbing pulse of the city. However, we quickly realised that this was all there was. Frankfurt was virtually destroyed during the Second World War and has been rebuilt as Germany's main financial city. Monday to Friday the place may well be a centre of frenzied activity but at the weekend everyone spills out of the city until Monday morning.

European Central Bank, Frankfurt
It did mean we could see in comfort the exteriors of those few buildings of major importance. We soon found The Old Opera House and the Stock Exchange. Both are impressive buildings but have been largely reconstructed after the war. So too has the Old Rathaus with its stepped gables and most of the other buildings that surround the Römer as the main square is known. Nearby is the impressive gothic Kaiserdom where from 1562 until 1806 the Holy Roman Emperors were crowned. It, and most of the buildings surrounding it, were almost razed during the war. Generally, even if things look old they most probably are not. However, we had to remind ourselves that the reason Frankfurt is such a boring place is because we bombed everything it had.

Old Opera House, Frankfurt

Römer or main square, Frankfurt

Town hall, Frankfurt

Kaiserdom, Frankfurt

Wartime devastation around the Kaiserdom, Frankfurt
We eventually found Goethe's birthplace but it was closed and swathed in scaffolding with large crowds of happy Jappy chappies having their photos taken in front of it. We did discover a red sandstone figure of Charlemagne, who is reputed to have founded the city of Frankfurt in the eighth century. We also found the huge Paulskirche, built between 1790 and 1833, also heavily restored after the war. It was here that the first German National Assembly was held in 1848 and President Kennedy spoke there on his visit in 1963. (Whether he adapted his famous Berlin statement to say "Ich bin ein Frankfurter" we do not know.)

Goethe's birthplace, Frankfurt

Emperor Charlemagne, founder of the city of Frankfurt

Paulskirche, Frankfurt
We crossed the River Main by an iron footbridge from where we watched the national dragon boat racing championships. This was the best fun of the morning with teams from all over Germany participating. We bought a plate of chips and mayonnaise and joined others on the far bank to cheer them all on. There was a lovely atmosphere. From the other side of the River Main the huge towers of the various financial organisations dominate the skyline. Not for nothing is Frankfurt on Main nicknamed Mainhatten!

Dragon boat racing on the River Main, Frankfurt

Iron bridge with Mainhatten behind, Frankfurt
We walked back through the deserted but excellent shopping malls to the Stock Exchange, the financial heart of Germany. Outside were a brass bull and a brass bear, representing the rises and falls in share prices.

Bull and Bear outside the Stock Exchange, Frankfurt
We felt generally rather disappointed with Frankfurt and disinclined to spend the rest of the day walking around in a ghost town. We took the train back to the campsite, gave our transport tickets to some newly arrived campers as they are valid all day, packed up and drove north to see Exeter's twin town Bad Homburg.

This is a pleasant spa town with a small historic quarter of half-timbered houses and a mediaeval castle surrounded by beautiful gardens. There was far more life in Bad Homburg than we had found in Frankfurt and we spent a pleasant couple of hours exploring the town. Exeter Weg was a long way out, probably on a trading estate if they are as enthusiastic about twinning as Exeter is, so we gave it a miss. Outside the entrance to the Kurhalle we discovered an English phone box given as a twinning gift by Exeter in the 1990s. It was in working order – which it almost certainly was not when it was located in Exeter High Street. As we used it to phone home we wondered whether we'd ever been in it before!

Old Exeter phone box in Bad Homburg

Kurhalle, Bad Homburg

Spa of Kaiser Wilhelm Ist, Bad Homburg

Siamese temple in the Kurpark, Bad Homburg

Castle, Bad Homburg

Some bad Homburg hats
After several abortive attempts to leave the town and a couple of diversions that sent us round in circles for a while, we eventually succeeded in leaving the large, urban conurbation behind and headed across country towards the Rhine. The route eventually turned out to be very pleasant taking us along winding roads through the Taunus region of steep, wooded hills and deep valleys. We had to be very controlled not to divert to Katzenelnbogen (cat's elbow) when we saw it signposted and reached Lorch still singing a silly song from our childhood with the chorus line "In Gillygillyochsenpfefferkatzenelnbogen by the Sea". (Don't worry about it if you are not from our generation.) We'd never realised such a place actually existed!

The campsite we were seeking turned out to be several kilometres up the Rhine from Lorch. Instead of following beside the river we were directed up a steep narrow route used by growers attending their vines. This gave us wonderful views down onto the river. It was still warm and sunny when we arrived so we were able to sit overlooking the vines as we drank chilled white Thuringian wine, a greatly appreciated present from our friend Hubert. Tomorrow we will buy some wine from the banks of the Rhine before we move on from here. It is now 11pm and the rain has started again. Temperatures have become so much more comfortable over the last few days.

The Rhine from our campsite south of Lorch

Goslar and Gottingen

2007-06-20T16:09:00.000+01:00

Monday 11th June, Bad Harzburg, Germany
Today we drove north, our intention being to visit another friend, Ethe, living in the area of the Harz mountains at Salzgitter Bad. If you read last year's blog of our time in Friesland and Schleswig-Holstein you may recall our visit to the family home of the Feddersen family near Niebüll where Ian's mother had worked during her teens, helping to look after a young girl, Ethe. This young girl is now an elderly retired psychiatrist but remembers Ian well and has been eager to retain the family friendship since Ian's mother died several years ago.

Our journey took us through the pretty village of wooden framed houses at Stolberg where we stopped for a stroll and a simple lunch. Nearby at Bad Frankenhausen is the Panorama Museum that overlooks the surrounding countryside from an imposing position on a hilltop surrounded by poppy fields. Of course we had to visit the museum on behalf of our friend Ralph, whom we mentioned recently as an enthusiast of panoramas. The museum contains a massive panorama of the Peasant's War of the 16th century. Disappointingly the museum was closed on Mondays but the views from the massive, circular building – known locally, rather appropriately, as the "Elephant's toilet" - were magnificent.

Panorama Museum, Bad Frankenhausen
We stopped to look at the typical little town of Wernigerode with its half timbering, cobbled streets and lovely town square. Street after street of unspoilt little wooden houses crowded in around us as we wandered through the town searching for a baker's shop. Shortly afterwards we reached Bad Harzburg and found the campsite we had been aiming for. The sun has remained unpleasantly hot all day and during the evening we cowered in the shelter of the hedge to escape being burned as we gradually relaxed after a busy day of driving.

A manhole cover worthy of the beautiful town of Wernigerode

Town Hall, Wernigerode

Half-timbered houses, Wernigerode
Tuesday 12th June, Goslar
This morning we drove on into Goslar, where we found a quiet road outside the town to park and were wandering the streets of the little town by 10am. We were last here 33 years ago and both had memories of a beautiful old town crammed with wooden framed houses, either infilled with bricks or nogging, or hung with slates. Our memory had not failed and the town is every bit as beautiful as we had found it then. The streets are cobbled and traffic is banned from the centre, so there was an eerie calm as we made our way on foot into the town, passing along streets of beautiful, steep roofed houses, slate hung with brightly painted window frames and decorated entrance doors with ornately carved lintels. In the main town square the 15th century gothic town hall dominates. Here too is the Kaiserwörth with its painted carved wooden figures of Emperors, built in 1494. This was originally intended as the hall of the Draper's Guild but is now a hotel. Tourists crowded the square and horses and carriages offered guided rides around the old town. The tables on the shady side of the square were filled with visitors enjoying coffees and ice creams. It was a very pleasant, relaxed and picturesque scene.

Slate-hung houses, Goslar

Half-timbered houses, Goslar

Kaiserwörth on the Market Square, Goslar

Town Hall on the Market Square, Goslar

14th century imperial eagle on the Market Square fountain, Goslar

All that remains of the Cathedral, Goslar
We bought Harzwurst with bread and Senf, followed by Pflaumentorte and coffee for lunch which we ate in the market square before buying flowers for Ethe. As we were about to return to Modestine there were rolls of thunder and lightning flashed in jagged streaks. The rain then cascaded down in torrents onto the town. We dived for the nearest coffee shop where we watched the water deluging from the sky for thirty minutes without easing. In no time the square was under water and when it eventually cleared we paddled our way back to Modestine to continue for 16 kilometres north to Saltzgitter Bad where we were already very late for our visit to Ethe.

As we left Goslar the storm returned, directly overhead. The roads could not cope with the torrents, the sky was black, and bolt after bolt of lightning smashed onto the fields around us while the thunder crashed and roared around above. Visibility was reduced to a few yards but as there was nowhere to pull off the road we drove slowly on, the wheels raising a wake as we went.

Last year in Spain someone gave us a CD road atlas of Europe for our computer. It has proved really useful so today we were able to find Ethe's house straight away. She was waiting anxiously at her window and quickly welcomed us inside where we dried off over tea and quark cake while she and Ian chatted about the past and what was happening to the various members of Ethe's family. Although well into her eighties, she still keeps busy peer reviewing articles for a leading German psychiatric journal and preparing a revised catalogue of the paintings of her grandfather Hans Peter Feddersen. The welcome we were shown was really warm and we were even offered accommodation for the night. However, the storm had abated and we thought it best to return to Goslar and seek out another campsite suitably located for tomorrow's planned activity.

Ian with Ethe, Salzgitter Bad
Wednesday 13th June 2007, Goslar, Germany
We've had a really lovely day with no driving or commitments or worries of any sort. It has been rather stressful one way and another recently so we have enjoyed simply walking in the cool, wet, forested slopes of the Rammelsberg, in the Harz Mountains, on the edge of Goslar.

The day started with a couple of Dutch people recognising Modestine from the campsite near Prague. Several times now Modestine has been recognised, usually in a completely different country from where she was first seen!

Next an Australian couple from Adelaide came for a chat as they have been in Europe a couple of weeks and haven't spoken to anyone in English yet. They have just purchased a motorhome and a couple of mountain bikes and are touring Europe for a few months. They say they come every year so this year decided to make a definite commitment and store the vehicle in France when they go back, so it is waiting for them next year. He tells us if we think of visiting Australia we should go in April to June, otherwise it will be too hot. On the other hand, why go? He adores Europe and would love to move to France permanently. So many of the reports we hear claim nothing beats Europe and there is so much still to explore here.

Dusting the cobwebs off our hiking boots we walked four kilometres along unmarked woodland paths seeking out the old mining museum that is on the Unesco listing of world heritage sites. Already, outside the forest, the day was becoming too hot for comfort. Underfoot the woodland paths had been swept away in places by yesterday's rain and small rivers and waterfalls had developed and were cascading down the hillside over the path. Eventually we arrived at the lake above the mine from where the water was taken to run the waterwheels that provided energy to the underground workings.

Woodland stream near Goslar
Goslar and the Harz form a very beautiful area but the town's prosperity is based very much on industry. The Rammelsberg is an area rich in various different ores, mainly lead, copper and zinc but also having veins of silver and even gold. Its importance to Unesco is that there is documented evidence that it has been continuously mined since 968 until 1988, the longest recorded period for any mine in the world.

Rammelsberg mine, Goslar

Self photography through a mirror by a couple of miners, Rammelsberg near Goslar
Most visits to sites in Germany are guided. This is fine for Ian but Jill's German is limited and she misses too much, particularly when it's technical. We were told there was a tour for some Canadians at noon and we could join that if we liked. When they arrived they turned out to be youthful French Canadians and we could hardly understand a word they said! It sounds so different from French French! The German guide spoke in colourful English however and the Canadians were obviously bilingual.

Donning our hard hats we were taken underground along tunnels where we were frequently bent double, climbing up and down steep metal steps from one level to another and entering huge areas where giant wooden water wheels activated pulleys and cables to operate the workings. All the levels were running with water and the huge wheels would have been necessary to operate the pumps. (Strange that water was used to drain away the water.) Along with the ore that was extracted were many by-products known as vitriols such as ochre and verdigris, produced by the effects of water on the ores, which were once used in paint manufacture and medicines. The visit was fascinating, lasting about an hour by which time we were actually feeling very cold! Exiting from an adit into a main tunnel with a narrow rail track running through we had to move quickly back again as one of the old mining trains trundled past with some visitors on a different tour. A strange experience in the darkness 135 metres below the surface!

Underground workings, Rammelsberg mine, Goslar

Formation of vitriols, Rammelsberg mine, Goslar

Adit with stalactites, Rammelsberg mine, Goslar

Giant waterwheel, Rammelsberg mine, Goslar

Beware of the train, Rammelsberg mine, Goslar
Our ticket included access to the above ground workings, the crushing machines, the settling tanks, the history of mining in the Harz and much more. We have spent the entire day at the mine and still missed so much. One area of particular interest was the testimony of survivors, usually from Poland and the Ukraine who were brought to Germany as forced labour to work at the Rammelsberg during the war. We never cease to wonder at the resilience of human nature to survive under such appalling conditions where they were also subjected to the tyranny of Nazi oppression.

Ore processing plant, Rammelsberg mine, Goslar

Power hall, Rammelsberg mine, Goslar
There were special exhibitions about the history of two firms that still flourish in the town. One is a lead processing plant and the other, H.C.Stark had its origins in the early 19th century recycling by-products of the mines, such as the vitriols. From these beginnings it has developed to become one of the leading manufacturers of tungsten products.

We walked back through the woods again to our campsite where our feet are slowly recovering from an entire day in hiking boots to which they have become quite unaccustomed.

Thursday 14th June 2007, Seeburg, near Göttingen
We returned into Goslar this morning to use the facilities of the really good internet shop, sorting out further bank difficulties, emails and blogs. By the time we had finished it was lunchtime and then we discovered some more beautiful corners of this wonderfully preserved little town, so we didn't leave Goslar until mid afternoon.

Decorated 16th century house, Goslar

Carved doorway, Goslar

Decorative slate hanging, Goslar

Beside the millstream, Goslar

Just one last ordinary street in Goslar
We took the winding road up through the Harz mountains, stopping at the Okertalsperre, a massive dam that created a huge reservoir from a drowned valley back in the 1950s. Certainly the scenery was lovely and reminded us of the wooded hills of Devon and the reservoirs on Dartmoor.

Okertalsperre
About 20 kilometres from Göttingen we stopped at a campsite where we hoped to be able to get a bus into the city tomorrow. It looks as if we will have to drive however but it has been a pleasant place to stop, located in a typically tidy German village of smart wooden framed houses with immaculate gardens where not a single blade of grass is misplaced. It is visually lovely but strikes us as rather a dull place in which to live. Nearby is Seeburger See, a lake for swimming, boating and leisure activities. It is attractive with nature trails and plenty of bird life. Soon after we arrived however we were joined by the inseparable trio, Thunder, Lightning and Rain who have been behaving like hooligans outside ever since. Sitting in the centre of a treeless field with bolts of lightning hitting the ground all around we feel we are a sitting target. We just hope our circuit breaker works okay if we get hit. After the heat we have experienced lately storms are inevitable and the countryside certainly needs the rain.

Some years ago Ian enquired about a post working with the 18th century book collections at Göttingen University Library. Nothing came of it and at the time we were very disappointed, but it probably worked out for the best. We thought that tomorrow we might seek out the library and see just what we missed out on.

Friday 15th June 2007, Fulda
This morning we drove to the little village of Ebergötzen a few kilometres from the campsite, our mission to discover the mill where in the 1840s the German cartoonist, writer and poet Wilhelm Busch spent part of his formative years and developed a life-long friendship with the son of the miller. Their childish antics together inspired Busch to create his mischievous characters Max and Moritz which have remained perennially popular in Germany and their adventures have been translated and published in countries all around the world. We found the mill, complete with wooden millwheel and leat, a pretty timber-framed structure in the heart of the village.

Max und Moritz, Ebergötzen

Wilhelm Busch museum in the mill at Ebergötzen
We continued to the edge of Göttingen where we stopped to buy some more wine we'd recently discovered at one of the Aldi supermarkets. Only 1.5 euros a bottle and it tastes really warm and rich. We have become the European experts on cheap red wines since we retired and this is definitely one of the best. Aldi can now be found in England so look out for Dornfelder Rheinhessen.

Welcome to Göttingen
Leaving Modestine to snooze in their car park we took the bus into the town centre. It proved to be a very civilised town with everything one would expect from a prosperous German city – clean, smart and largely pedestrianised with sunny street cafes and ice cream parlours. It also has a wealth of mediaeval and baroque architecture, all in an excellent state of restoration with many timber framed buildings. It is a university town, established in1737 by George Augustus of Hanover – George II of England - which brings its own relaxed, cosmopolitan atmosphere to the town where there are a host of cultural activities available to the residents.

Typical street view, Göttingen
In the Jakobskirche a loud and boisterous organ recital was taking place while in the gothic town hall we got swept up temporarily with a wedding party as we strolled in to look at the painted ceiling and wall decorations. In the main market square stood a pretty statue of young goose girl in the centre of a fountain. It is the custom for every student on gaining a doctorate at the University of Göttingen to climb up to kiss her cheeks, making her probably the most kissed girl in Germany – and Göttingen graduands the dampest doctors.

Goose girl fountain, Göttingen
Around the corner we found what we were seeking – the Paulinerkirche which now houses the historic collections of the University Library. The security to enter is daunting but after so many years wondering what it might have been like if Ian had come here to work we were determined to see inside if possible. Having been told it was only for researchers, we eventually persuaded them to issue us with temporary swipe cards to operate the internal doors in exchange for our passports. As the catalogue shows they hold copies of several of Ian's publications he could probably have convinced them he was a researcher if all else had failed.

Library exhibition room, Göttingen
Inside we realised why security was so tight. The University Library was established in 1734 before the University was fully inaugurated, and there was a systematic attempt made to build up the collections, with agents in many major cities in Europe. Thus its collections of 18th century English imprints are so complete that it was used as the German base for the British Library's Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue Project in the 1970s. The librarians at Göttingen were leading scholars and in the 1840s included the brothers Grimm, whose manuscript entries can be found in the hundreds of massive leather bound catalogues which are housed in the 18th century reading room. In their time the library was housed in the former Dominican Paulinerkirche, founded in 1294 but secularised during the Reformation. The library was frequented by a galaxy of scholars. Goethe described its collections as a capital asset from which an incalculable interest accrues. The church was badly damaged in 1944 but has recently been restored as an exhibition gallery. Although it was closed, we were allowed in for a brief look. The library has wide-ranging Asiatic and African collections and is especially proud of its Curtis Collection on American Indians, a set of which Exeter University Library recently discarded. Even more impressive was the Heyne reading room for early printed books, named after a scholar librarian of the 18th century. Our swipe card let us into massive stacks lined with more than 200,000 volumes dating from the period between 1600 and 1900. There were many early English imprints including, picked at random off the shelves, an account of a voyage round the world in about 1705 by an earlier Captain Cooke, which included the account of Alexander Selkirk which Defoe must have used as the basis for Robinson Crusoe. Jill's eagle eye also spotted an 1852 catalogue of the manuscripts in Plymouth Library which Ian had not known of. Being surrounded by so much learning was almost oppressive. The stack was much hotter than was desirable for the storage of early printed materials and it was almost a relief to escape into the streets of the university precinct where the names of noted university residents were placed above almost every door of the half-timbered buildings. A little further on was the classical building of the University Aula or main hall and administrative buildings, erected in the reign of William IV of England and Hanover whose statue faced the portal across an attractive little garden. The building was formerly used to imprison naughty students, including Bismark, locked up for taking part in an illegal duel.

Entrance to the University Aula, Göttingen
Mid afternoon we returned to Modestine to continue our journey to Fulda. Having a long and awkward journey ahead of us we decided to take the motorway. This was not really a good move as we discovered too late that an accident and a lorry shedding its load had closed the motorway in both directions for a while and we were caught in a huge tailback while a doctor arrived by helicopter and police cars created even more chaos by tearing to the scene along the hard shoulder. Eventually we passed the holdup and spent the rest of the afternoon driving through heavy rain with huge lorries thundering past. There are no speed restrictions on German motorways and drivers make the most of their freedom. It is quite scary to see how close they drive to each other at high speeds.

The campsite we had marked on the map turned out to be a long way from Fulda and very expensive indeed, so we drove on to find the one where we are now staying on the other side of Fulda. It is still raining but the site is pleasant and friendly and only half the price of the one we saw earlier.

Down but not out in Germany

2007-06-19T10:55:00.000+01:00

Wednesday 6th June 2007, Gera, Germany
We are back in the euro zone again and somewhere where we can at last understand all the signs and what people are saying to us!

Before leaving Karlovy Vary we went to the supermarket in a shopping complex that rivals the best that France or Germany can offer, where we spent the remainder of our Czech money restocking the fridge and buying baguettes for lunch. Having calculated our shopping to the exact amount we had in our purse we headed for the border with Germany driving through the wooded hills along empty, broken roads. As we reached the border we found ourselves in the middle of an oriental bazaar. The streets of the little Czech village of Potucky were packed with stalls selling clothes, beer and cigarettes to hundreds of Germans who had walked across the border from the town of Johanngeorgenstadt for the express purpose of buying up cheap goods. All the notices and street signs were in Czech and Vietnamese and there were queues of pedestrians waiting to cross the border in either direction. When we arrived however we were told we could not cross with a vehicle and would have to drive 30 kilometres further on, cross into Germany and return along the German side of the border to reach the same road we were travelling on the other side! Czech mate!! You cannot argue with the customs officials. All they needed to do was to glance at our passports and take the chain away from across the road. Traffic was streaming happily along the far side and in thirty seconds we could be continuing our route, but it was not to be. Why couldn't it have been indicated on the map that cars couldn't cross? Aren't we all part of Europe now? What about open borders? We turned around and made our way back into the village where the tourist information office confirmed that we couldn't cross but directed us to another crossing point only 15, rather than 30, kilometres away. There was compensation in that although the roads were rough and pitted, the countryside was deserted and similar to Dartmoor as we drove through hills covered with pine forests beside a mountain stream tumbling over boulders. We stopped for a picnic lunch in a peaceful, grassy meadow and eventually reached the crossing point into Germany where the guards were more than a little surprised to see an English camper van emerging from the deserted woodland along the border.

The non-crossing point at Potucky
Meadow flowers near Potucky
Once into Germany the roads and the road signs improved. Everywhere seemed so clean, neat and tidy after weeks in Eastern Europe and although we are now in the area that used to be East Germany, it has improved beyond measure since reunification. The smell from the intensive farming sheds on the outskirts of some of the Czech villages had been very unpleasant and it was good to see animals in the fields again and to see farming on a more human scale rather than fields of wheat stretching to infinity.

We made our way to the town of Zwickau where we visited the motor museum. Our main interest was to see where the East German Trabant had been produced but it turned out to be an excellent museum on the history of the German car industry with some beautifully preserved early Horch limousines from the 1920s as well as cars used by the German military, state vehicles and early vans and lorries. The star of the exhibition was however the Trabie. One of the guides started talking to Ian and asked if he had lived in East Germany! She said she used to work on the production line in the factory producing the Trabant. This funny vehicle symbolises so much that was wrong about the DDR. Today it appears quaint and functional. It had a two stroke engine, useless suspension, was cramped and uncomfortable and was the regulation "one size fits all" vehicle the state said people could own. They had to wait up to twenty years after placing their order before they could actually buy their car. (Our own friends were on the list for over eleven years!) Many ordered one and then sold their place to someone willing to pay to queue-jump. The basic model didn't really change greatly over the thirty years of its production, which only ceased after reunification when the factory was taken over by Volkswagen. It was rather nostalgic looking around the museum and there were several prototypes that were never mass produced. Trabants are rarely seen in Germany now but we saw hundreds of them on the roads of Hungary where they are nurtured with respect.

They actually had a lot to recommend them and the fact that there are still so many running today proves they had staying power. The bodywork was produced from home grown flax impregnated with a phenol resin compound and compressed between sheets of foil under enormous pressure to produce a preformed resilient shell that unlike metal, would never rust. It also meant there was no need to import expensive raw materials.

We were eventually thrown out when the museum closed for the day but left with our very own miniature Trabant in a little box as a souvenir.

We are making our way towards Weimar to spend a few days with our friend Hubert. We plan to arrive on Friday so tonight we are camping in the countryside outside of the town of Gera which we will visit tomorrow.

Friday 8th June 2007, Weimar, Germany
We are not writing much about the town of Weimar here as we wrote in some detail last time. Our account can be seen here.
We are now safe with Hubert and recovering from the most worrying and stressful day yesterday that we have so far encountered on our travels. We were far too exhausted and preoccupied to even remember about the blog last night. Briefly, our debit card was cloned in a cash machine somewhere in Europe recently, possibly Bratislava, and our account has been hacked into with varying amounts stolen over the past few days from cash machines in and around Rome – rather a long way from where we have been travelling. We only discovered this yesterday afternoon when we logged on to electronic banking in the town of Gera for the first time since 29th May. We have lost over £2,000 in total. Having just arrived in Germany we then had to find out how to buy a phone card and then a phone that would take it. We asked for help in one of the banks but they simply told us they couldn't link to an international line and we'd need to use a call box or our mobile – which we'd left back at the campsite in Modestine. The so called free-phone number cost us almost ten euros because we were calling from abroad and we were terrified it would run out before the music on the helpline, where we were in a queue, finished playing. Ian speaks good German. How would we have coped had we discovered the theft in the Czech Republic? Once our cards were cancelled we were left with very little money as we had not yet had time to get out any euros since we arrived in Germany. We've cashed our emergency traveller's cheques and today have ascertained that our standing orders will still be paid which is fortunate as our car insurance payment is due this week and we'd feared being stranded here unable to drive.

Last night on the campsite we had to prepare a letter to the fraud investigation team and the Visa dispute team to try to get our stolen money replaced. Today we had to search for somewhere to get it printed and then failed to find anywhere in Weimar with a fax machine that worked. Every second of our waking day has been frustrating and we still have only our £200 emergency money to last us indefinitely. As we have no fixed address our current headache is how to get hold of the replacement cards. The bank tells us it cannot send them to us here in Germany at our friend's home and has sent them to our home address despite us saying we would not be there for weeks! We have a credit card which we have never used so will have to discover if and how it works. For those of you who have envied us what we are doing, this shows that there can be horrors as well as delights. The important thing though is that we are both fine and so is Modestine. We are so lucky to have friends scattered around Europe and to be near enough to one of them to get here without needing to buy diesel as this morning we didn't have enough money with us to do so!

Even before we looked at our bank account yesterday the day was being difficult. We used the washing machine on the campsite and were told off for using it after 10am as they wanted to clean the toilets. They told Jill to come back at noon and Jill summoned up enough German to tell them she had no intention of hanging around for two hours and if they didn't like it they shouldn't keep the washing machine in the ladies loo. Next we were told we couldn't buy bus tickets into Gera from the campsite which lies by a lake about 10 KM to the north of the town. On the bus we didn't have the right coins for the vending machine. None of the passengers could change a bank note. Eventually an elderly lady with initiative sold us a couple of her own spare tickets. And so the day continued. Everything we undertook posed a problem and, with the exception of the bus lady, people were not very helpful. We felt very lost and wretched.

During the morning, before things went completely pear-shaped, we visited the caves that had been dug out deep under the hill within the town. This was the best place to be in the great heat we are again experiencing. They were dug to create caves for storing Gera beer which used to be made here. It kept the beer at a cool temperature and for an hour it did the same for us before we came out into the stifling heat again.

Caves beneath the town of Gera
Unfortunately we don't have a clear impression of Gera as we ended up too worried to notice much about the town. It did have an awful lot of exposed, open space without shade on such a hot day, the result of being very badly bombed during WW2. The town square with its market is reputed to be the most beautiful in Thuringia but personally we think Weimar's is far nicer.

Fountain with Samson and the lion, town square, Gera
Entrance to the Town Hall, Gera
This morning we reached Weimar by lunch-time but before bothering Hubert with our worries we went to the Anna Amalia library to check for messages from our bank. We have a library membership card from our last visit but our internet password wouldn't work. The staff told us we'd need to reregister and it would cost us nine euros for a year's membership. Our finances were so dire we dare not spend it and were obliged to walk across the town in the midday heat to find somewhere less expensive. (We were later charged twelve euros commission to cash our traveller's cheques but there was no choice but to pay.)

When we eventually reached Hubert's home we were welcomed with a cold beer. The temperature in the sun on his balcony at 5.30 this afternoon was off the top of the thermometer which goes up to 50 degrees so we were all melting! It was good to see him again and we were made so welcome. Shortly after, his friend Antje joined us from Apolda where she lives. It was a happy reunion over a supper of salad with assorted cheeses and cold meats with white wine. Together we then drove to Hubert's garden allotment to water the wilting seedlings and to watch the sunset over the hillside beside the memorial at the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Sunset from Hubert's garden house
Hubert, Ian and Antje in the sunset
Sunday 10th June 2007, Weimar, Germany
We have now ascertained two very important things. Our bank account is no longer blocked so standing orders can be paid and our salary has been paid in –though it is immediately being withdrawn by a thieving Italian who has again removed over £300 from the account since we notified our bank! It must have been already taken but not processed. The second thing is that, having dusted the cobwebs from our credit card, it works and we can get money even if it will be an expensive way of living. So we are not destitute and can move on, leaving Hubert in peace as he shelters in his darkened flat from the unbelievable heat here.

Yesterday we met Hubert after he had finished giving a guided tour of the town - something that since he retired as Weimar's chronicler he does on special request. We then went by train to join Antje in Apolda where she has her flat. The weather was draining and the sunlight unremitting but we braved it all to take a look at a curious salt water spa where enthusiastic Germans dressed up in white robes and stood sniffing piles of twigs through which naturally salty spring water filtered. It's amazing the cranky things they think up here to improve their health but, being charitable, it probably makes them feel good just as a walk along the sea front might do, were it not hundreds of miles away.

In a small village that slept in the afternoon heat we parked in the little shade we could find and foolishly walked a couple of kilometres through meadowland and vines to a Weinstube beside the river Saale. Hot and sticky, we sank into chairs on the terrace overlooking the river, shrinking against the wall for protection from the furnace of sunlight. The next couple of hours were a delight as we shared a bottle of chilled white wine produced from the surrounding vines, along with a couple of bottles of cold spring water. Canoes and rafts with musicians passed us on the river and we all exchanged cheerful waves and greetings. By the time we had struggled back to the car it was a little cooler and we returned to Antje's flat for ice cream, cold showers and beers on the balcony followed by mozzarella salad and pasta. We finished off with strawberries and champagne. (So you see for destitute Eurotramps of no fixed abode we are living rather well!) Hubert gradually developed a splitting headache and staggered off to sleep while we walked back through the deserted town to catch the last train back to Weimar for more cold showers. We have really appreciated the luxury of living under a cool roof these last two days and are hoping the weather will cool before we move on tomorrow.

At the Weinstube, 1
At the Weinstube, 2
A passing raft on the river Saale
This morning Hubert rang from Apolda to cancel our planned meeting this afternoon. Instead we will meet for supper at a restaurant at Tiefurt, by which time he will hopefully be feeling better.

This morning we made our way from patch to patch of shade down to the beautiful cemetery where our friends Sigrid and her mother are buried. Since our last visit they have been joined by Hubert's elderly mother who died in her nineties a few months ago. Their shared headstone beneath the yew trees was a small haven of cool peace with blackbirds singing and hopping in the surrounding undergrowth.

Nearby we passed the Russian Orthodox church with its gold onion dome just behind the tomb housing the bodies of Weimar's literary giants Goethe and Schiller. The nearby Park beside the river Ilm offered us a beautiful and shady walk which took us up to the Anna Amalia library which went up in flames while we were here in 2004. It is amazing how they are restoring it. Already the outside looks perfect, the salvaged books have been returned and many of those damaged by fire and water have also been repaired and returned. How sufficient money has been raised in so short a time we do not know but it is indicative of how important the library is to Germany and to Weimar in particular.

In 1964 Ian was photographed on this spot on a University Summer School
The Anna Amalia Library risen from the ashes
In the market square we sat on a bench with the crowds of tourists to eat a Thuringian sausage with mustard in a roll. They are the epitome of Weimar and Thuringia for us and we look forward to one on every visit. Before returning to the flat to shelter from the afternoon heat of 42 degrees we explore the Ost shop filled with nostalgic memories of the bad old days of the GDR where you now pay capitalist prices for mugs and tea towels with Communist slogans.

This evening we spent a very happy evening with Hubert and Antje at Tiefurt, first taking a walk in the sunset beside the river Ilm as it wound its way through the beautiful parkland that surrounds the little palace where the Duchess Anna Amalia lived and kept one of her literary salons during the 18th century. Goethe, Wieland, Schiller and Herder were regular participants at her Tiefurt soirées.

Hubert and Antje in the park at Tiefurt
The recently restored palace at Tiefurt
After supper at the outdoor restaurant in the evening, where the raking rays of the sun were still too hot and brilliant for comfort, Antje dropped us back at Hubert's flat while they went on to Apolda. It was our final goodbye for this visit. Tomorrow morning we will leave Weimar behind, feeling as always, so much regret to be leaving and frustration at the number of things we still wish to do and see before moving on. It is always hard to leave friends and Hubert has been Ian's good friend now for over forty years.