Day 14: Albert to Amiens

September 9, 2023

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In Canada as we were growing up, "Remembrance Day" was basically a non-event, something attended by fairly old people once per year at the Cenotaph. But it was and is very real over here, where the events actually happened, and it's every day, not just once a year.

We cycled to the centre of Albert, where they have a lovely rebuilt basilica, and also a Somme 1916 museum, housed in tunnels under the town.We by-passed the museum this time, have visited it once before. But the basilica is always worth ducking in to.

Inside the basilica, very attractive decoration

Across from the basilica, the statue of a piper. Someone has put a Canadian flag in its hand! Note the poppies around.

The piper brings to mind our second tremendously powerful song about WW I, "No Man's Land" by Eric Bogle. We put this in our blog from here a few years ago, but it never loses its impact. The link to the piper is the chorus:

"Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?

Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?

Did the band play The Last Post in chorus?

Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?"

Here is a live version of the song, with Eric Bogle. It has been covered lots, notably by Peter, Paul. and Mary (the vocals), but Eric Bogle does it best.

We set off toward Amiens, still following the Veloroute de la Memoire. We had not gone far when the way was somewhat barred by a fairly large brocante, vide grenier, jumble sale, or whatever. The French really love these exercises in swapping junk with each other. What puzzles me is where they get the stuff in the first place, since they lack Walmart!

Our way then continued on truly quiet small roads. Such roads seem more consistent and plentiful than in Portugal, say, or England.

How about this nice house along the way!

The road changed complexion a bit, as we now had that kind of Dutch setup in which bikes have priority on the sides, but cars can use the edges when needed when there is oncoming traffic.

Somewhere before Corbie we snapped a pigeon or dove of some kind, at quite a distance. Wild birds, let alone mammals, seem almost gone from this part of France, so we (like local hunters no doubt) will shoot anything!

Corbie had a moderate cathedral, and a quite nice city hall, but we were soon through town and on our way again.

We did shoot one more, dove?, shortly after leaving town.

From this point we did truly follow the Somme, or at least a canalised form of it, on a cycle way called the Valley of the Somme. It was rural and relaxing, though we did encounter some industry where we could not guess what they might be producing.

The Somme valley has lots of channels and ponds.

We entered Amiens and made our way straight to our hotel. With the temperature flirting with 40 degrees, we were again hoping they would let us in so we could find the cold shower. This is where we made a sort of rookie error, that accounted for a lot of steam coming out our ears. Not good in such hot weather.

In Europe streets have a habit of changing names every block. Our place was listed at #2 Rue de l'Oratoire. But we sailed past it, and ended up at #2 of the street that comprised the next block. This presented us with a blank, nameless door. But we are already primed (crabby about) accommodation with blank nameless doors, so we thought nothing of it. We phoned the number given by Booking, and bawled the guy out for having a blank nameless door. The guy did not address the door much, but focused on reception only being from 17:00. Since it was then 14:00, it was clear we were going to melt and die out there.

The nameless door, had a good reason for being nameless - it was a private residence!

Of course we did not quite melt and die, since we are here writing this. Instead we first set about finding the right address (it was 1/4 block away), and then we went to the cathedral. The cathedral can usually be counted on to be dark and cool!

And, the Amiens cathedral is the largest in France. It is twice the size of Notre Dame in Paris!

Like most great cathedrals, Amiens features a lot of detailed carving on the outside, especially over the entrances,

Your have to look carefully to see the detail they have put up there.

The exterior also has lots of spikey stuff.

A main feature of the inside is the towering height of the gothic arches. It's amazing that they could get these so tall. In fact though, the structure did need some reinforcements over time, like extra flying buttresses, and some kind of chain tie in which the chain was installed red hot, so it would contract and tighten as it cooled.

Look at this comparison of heights among local cathedrals:

You can see the infamous Rue de l'Oratoire on the map below, and follow some of the Grampies' staggering about in the heat. After a while we went and hid in that Parc de l'Eveche, before finally achieving the cold shower.

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Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 615 km (382 miles)

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Tricia GrahamThe things I really hate about accommodation are unmarked doors, lock boxes, late check ins and answer phones with a rapid flow or French basically telling you to go away and don’t bother them , Afraid now we are happy to pay extra for an early check in and a place that has an actual person at reception
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8 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Tricia GrahamWe are with you on all those points. The older we get the less we are willing to put up with such nonsense. Next trip we are going to filter for hotels, with 24 hour reception and more flexible check in times. We also are willing to pay more to have the kind of accommodation that will be a better fit for what we like.
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8 months ago

Tricia GrahamTo Steve Miller/GrampiesThat is exactly what we did almost all the time this trip and when we did it worked. As you say the other is absolute nonsense and set up to ruin your day. What is more I asked for a disabled room if they had it which was wonderful as I was able to shower in safety.
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8 months ago

Suzanne GibsonI had to laugh at your predicament with the changing street names and trying to get in at the wrong address. Almost exactly the same thing happened to us on our trip 14 years ago. I had the address of the booked hotel, remembered the correct house number, however on our way the street had changed names. But there was also a hotel at that address. We checked in and wondered why they had no record of our booking. Once the bikes were stowed away and we were in our room, I checked the address again and saw we were in the wrong hotel! So we moved, of course, since we couldn't cancel the other room. That was in Rouen, not too far from where you are now.
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8 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Suzanne GibsonWe will be extra careful when we get to Rouen in case history tries to repeat itself.
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8 months ago