War, religion and kulcha.

Monday 20^th June

We have had another quiet couple of days just meandering the countryside.

Saturday we left Oches and travelled via Verdun and some of the WWI battle sites along the way to Bar le Duc, where we are for 3 nights. There are a lot of memorial sites along the road so we only stopped for a few of them. The Battle of Verdun was a major battle between the Germans and French at the start of WWI. The town of Verdun was nearly flattened in the battle and some of the buildings still bear the bullet holes.

 

Butte de Vauquois - this site is now an American memorial. The barbed wire and tunnels are the remains of the battlefield.

Ossuaire de Douaumont - this memorial honours the dead of Verdun. 136,000 soldiers of both sides have never been identified and their names are listed in the memorial. The crosses represent those who were identified. 

This is only half of the crosses - there are as many looking the other way. Very hard to comprehend numbers, but this seems to make them more real. 

  

Ouvrage de la Falouse - this fort is still intact because it is on the south side of Verdun and never saw action. This property is privately owned and has been restored recently by the owners.

The entrance gate at Verdun. As we crossed the river we could hear a band playing - Rob said, they must have known we were coming and put on a show for us. Actually we have no idea what the band was playing for.

Reminds me of Dad's Army!

A memorial to the war dead in the main street of Verdun.

Bar le Duc consists of the upper and lower towns – the upper town is an old renaissance village and there were some beautiful street photos to be had. We parked our car in the main part of town not realising that it was all uphill to the upper town. Lots of stairs and a lot of uphill roads. We found we could have driven to the top but by that time we were nearly there. We crashed a christening at the church at the top – and the babies still cry even in France.

This was the upper town of Bar le Duc. This photo looks almost like a pen and ink drawing - if we could get rid of the cars.

We then headed to a small village nearby as we had seen signs in town about a painting exhibition in the village. Some lovely paintings to look at but I don’t think they were doing a roaring trade on Sunday at lunchtime. We made the old man happy when we bought some cake and coffee – I don’t think he’d had many sales for the day. We sat at the side of the road to eat them along with some ladies who were working at the show – when I asked where they got the pizza they were eating for lunch, one of them offered Rob a piece, which he accepted. New friends! One of the ladies showed us her paintings and one of them was of the abbey below. She said we should visit the town which was only 10km away. 

Abbay de les Trois Fontaines

Today, Monday, we decided to head for the town of Vitry-le-Francois and then to a lake nearby. We ended up going there via a town called Saint Dizier, which was the first town we stayed in on our last trip, the day we picked up the car. We had no idea the town was so big – I think we were so stressed with our first day driving that we headed for the hotel and the closest restaurant and that was it. Visiting the town for a second time and it is totally different.

In the town of Vitry-le-Francois we visited the Porte du Ponte which is the gateway to the Marne River to the East of Paris. Then on to a church which supposedly is in one of the most attractive villages in France – not so sure about that. It was a nice town, but no real character, and no real centre of life in the town.

Porte du Ponte 

The church in the town of Saint-Amand sur Fion, and its rose window above.

After a pretty ordinary lunch (for me – probably the worst meal I have had) we found ourselves on a driving trail of churches half made of wood. These dated back to the 15^th century and some of the timber supports in the churches were massive. And who says things need to be straight? Not a spirit level in sight and nothing straight in any of these churches and the buildings in the surrounding towns but they are still standing. We don’t remember seeing any of these types of buildings early on in our previous trip to France – the ones we saw last time seemed to be mostly over near the German border.

One of the half wooden churches on the church trail. You do get a bit sick of looking at churches but it is really the architecture that we are interested in, not from the point of view of what style, but just the interesting shapes and structures. How do they build these things to last? Just love the (crooked) lines on this church.

Tomorrow we move on again to Sarrebourg which is over towards the far Northeast of France. We are staying in a convent – no TV so Rob has a book; 1000 years of annoying the French.