It's raining, its pouring, the old man is snoring....

Friday 17^th June

It’s been a restful couple of days, not venturing out very far at all. The weather has not been great with thunderstorms some evenings (and then the internet goes down) and rain most mornings (and yes he was snoring). The rain has usually cleared around lunchtime so we do get a little fine weather to have a bit of a look around.

Once the rain cleared on Wednesday we decided to just head out to the east from here and have lunch at one of the restaurants that had advertised in a local area book. We found the restaurant no problems and it did a very nice lunch. None of these lunch places are what you would call gourmet French food, but rather homestyle French cooking. From there we continued easterly with the idea to just do a loop back to home. This took us across to the Meuse river valley and the Meuse is also in flood. Paris was not the only place to be flooded. The canal d’Est flows here alongside the Meuse. We didn’t see any canal boats in action but there were a few moored in a couple of the towns we passed.

Just driving along the back roads, and the places you see. Looked like it needed quite a bit of work but would have been pretty spectacular in its day.

We found ourselves in the town of Mouzin where we found an old medieval gateway which has been referred to as a gateway to France in times past. In the town we also found a felt museum. It was a bit hard to interpret some of the information but I enjoyed looking at the process and the products.

The gateway to France.

The abbey at Mouzin - I'm not sure but I think it may be a nursing home now.

Just one of the beautiful pieces at the felt museum. No idea why the museum was in Mouzin as I didn't see any specific reference to it in all the information.

Thursday we went to the town of Sedan which advertises the best medieval fort in Europe. It was a horrible day – rained all the way there. We had lunch first in the hope that the rain would stop, but no such luck, so we did the fort tour in the rain. This fort was pretty spectacular and the audio guide was very good. It was a real rabbit warren of passages and stairs, and gave my thighs a good workout. Now I know why those men looked good in tights. A couple of interesting tidbits – circular staircases were ‘invented’ so that intruders would not have room to wield a sword, and stair risers were not even so that intruders had to use caution negotiating the stairs. Useless facts for the day!

Caught sight of these storks as we entered a village - and they have wrapped the wires to protect the birds.

 

The battle of Stonne was fought in this area - one of the relics.

The fort at Sedan - the lords of the castles didn't have very long lives though most of the bios were silent on the causes of death.

A mock up of the signing of a marriage contract,with the King of teh time in attendance.

Seems we cannot get away from cars. While at the fort a whole lot of Audi R8s rolled in. Rob quizzed a guy who appeared to be in charge and apparently they are customers of Audi Germany who have purchased the experience to have the cars for a few days, take the cars to LeMans and do a few hot laps. He wishes!

The Audis - on their way to LeMans.

Today was another rest day. Just out for lunch to another restaurant, catch up on the washing, search for a WWI site that we didn’t find, and then home via some roads we hadn’t been on before. I didn’t mention the school bus the other day – hooking along a back road, round a corner and there was the bus coming the other way (thankfully they are only the size of ford transit vans). I’m sure he didn’t expect Fangio tourist coming the other way, and both of us headed for the verges. He has slowed down a bit on the narrow roads and is aware of school knock off times now.

Rob walked up the hill this afternoon to look at the church. This town was the centre of a major battle during WWII and the church still bears the bullet holes 

Tomorrow we pack and move on. We are headed down south just below Verdun and will explore that area for the next few days. We will be back in Belgium on Friday for a race meeting at Spa.