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France 2013
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| Our new Peugeot 308 parked outside our first hotel, a nice
motel at Compiegne. |
A little park with fresh vivid grass, oak trees and gardens
full of tulips surrounded our motel. |
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| Barbara behind Jonathon Sedgley's WW1 grave, Montay, near Le
Cateau-Cambresis |
Montay Cemetary. In Montay village, some people were still
collecting water into huge containers from a spring. The village bar-cafe
seemed to have no running water! And the farms had huge archways
from the cattle barns leading straight into the village street. The whole
place had the rustic aroma of cows! That evening we stayed at an Ibis
hotel at Fourmies, by a lake. "Les Etangs des Moines". We
enjoyed a lovely French haute cuisine meal in a the restaurant next the
hotel. |
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| Progress
was very slow as we took
the local roads with villages every few kms, 50 km limits and heaps of
roundabouts. We slowly made our way east and south, we crossed a canal
near Charleville-Mezieres near where we left Rob's boat 2 years ago. |
It was a nice sunny
day and we had coffee by the canal and walked along the banks |
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| The valley of the Meuse. |
A street in Verdun. |
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| Impressive monument in Verdun. |
Fountain on the promenade by the Meuse in Verdun. |
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| No mistaking which river this is! |
Verdun city gate. After Verdun, we got very tired of
driving, so we found a motel at Pagny-sur-Meuse, in a not-so-nice
industrial area. We had a reasonable meal very cheaply at the local
"pub", very different from the previous evening! On Sunday morning we
were up early. It was very thick fog so driving was hard, low visibility,
for the first 2 hours. We went through the Vosges mountains, and under a
huge 6km tunnel through the mountain. On the other side it was sunny, no
fog. We were in Alsace. We stopped for coffee high up by a mountain
forest. Then we descended to the river Rhine and the German border at Breisach. |
