What goes up, must come down!

Saturday 17th May

It's been a big day with lots of exercise - I might fade away to a shadow. Ha ha! We headed off to visit a fort on the Maginot line. The Maginot line was a line of defensive fortifications along the french border from Dunkirk in the north to Menton in the south. The french built these in the 1930s to deter invasions from Germany. They were less concentrated along the Belgian and Swiss borders as they expected that these 2 countries would be neutral in the event of war.

The Maginot Line.
The Germans figured out the weak points though,
and advanced through those.

You had to visit on a guided tour and they only did the tours in French or German so we decided we had more hope of understanding the french tour. (No need to worry though, they had great English notes about each part of the fort we visited.) Little did we know that this tour involved walking about 2k and climbing some 200 steps, up, and then down. At one point we were 30 metres underground. The fort had a medical centre, dentist, and even a morgue (never used as no one was ever killed there). It was a great tour and interesting to see some of the machinery still in working order. 

This entrance to the fort was for the ammunition
- there were train tracks for moving the loads of ammunition.

Odette and Alice admired this beautifully kept citroen 2CV. 

This dog was at work with the cashier at the fort
- maybe a groodle? 

One of the gun turrets. They were able to show us inside how they raised the turret
(this still worked), and the periscope arrangement,
and the tannoy for giving the instructions on range, etc. 

One of the corridors in the fort - this one was 500m long.
It was a huge complex.

Just some of the weapons in the museum part of the fort. 

Footsore, tired, but no stopping us, we headed on to the Chateau fort de Fleckenstein. This was constructed in the 12th century. This castle was embedded in a huge rocky cliff and was part of a defensive line of castles in the region (nothing to do with the war, centuries earlier - just local powerful people protecting their property). The castle is only 250m from the German border. The Fleckenstein family died out mid 1700s and now it is owned by the local government - it is just a crumbling pile of ruins.

They took advantage of the huge rockface when building the castle.
It was a long way down.

Okay, history lesson over, time for wine. The first cave we headed to was closed so we picked the next one on the way home. We were hoping to find a muscat for me but the wines at this cave were all very dry. Nothing purchased. Maybe tomorrow.

Stopped for some groceries on the way home - at Normas. We hadn't been to a Norma's before but it is like Aldi and seems like all the groceries are German. Another challenge in translation. We won the challenge - tortellini with arrabiata sauce for dinner.