Day 17: Ognes to Bouconville-Vauclair

September 12, 2023

Heart

Comment

Dodie had quite an adventure last night, after we received a message from our place in Reims coming up tomorrow, that they were cancelling. A scan of booking.com showed no vacant hotels at all near the city centre, and only a scattering of expensive apartments in the periphery. Dodie phoned Booking, and they said it was in the first instance up to the cancelling property to find an alternative, but that they have 24 hours to achieve this. Meanwhile Dodie kept searching. It's never easy, even when there is a fair supply of properties, because the place has to be near our track, have a place for the bikes, and be affordable. Suddenly Dodie found such a one, and called back to Booking for what to do. They said wait another hour for the original property to respond. Dodie waited, during which time of course, the vacancy she had found disappeared. So it was a third call to Booking (each call requiring to tell the whole evolving story over the weak phone line). This time Booking came up with an alternative, proposing to pay the fairly substantial price difference. We made the new booking, crossing our fingers that the payment would go through. (There is a certain tendency in such cases for a secret code to be sent by the bank to a phone that is sitting in a drawer back in Canada). But this time it worked, so just three hours into the project, we were set again for Reims.

Meanwhile for a small project I went to bring our recharged ebike batteries down to the bikes, which had been safely stowed in a suite of rooms that are part of the building. I found their door locked, and it would not be opened by any of the three keys the owner had left with us. I had to phone the man, quite late in the evening, and it turned out he had inadvertently locked us out from the bikes. Without that Reims project giving me time to go visit the bikes, we would have been going nowhere this morning!

Here is our street as we started out this morning. It is technically in Chauny, which is adjacent to Ognes. You would have to class the towns like this as "unassuming" - kind of typical rural French. But unassuming or not, every town that has some commerce has at least one great bakery. We stopped at one, and picked up the French Breakfast of Champions - chocolate (or in this case, coffee, eclair. Our calling it this does mean that any sensible French person would eat this at breakfast. Only we not sensible tourists are into this.

As we set out we again found ourselves not only following a canal, but also on EV 3. This makes sense, because as the Pilgrim Route it is heading for Spain, and so are we!

When we left the canal, we followed very small roads and other cycle ways. This was a very peaceful day, as we passed through endless corn fields, forests, and general farm land. We passed by lakes and ponds. It really was nice.

However, in this region you are never far from evidence or remembrance of past wars. Near Manicamp we came upon a preserved example of a temporary bridge. It was used in 1944 in spanning the Oise, no doubt replacing bridges destroyed by the retreating Germans.

And near Champs, there was one of the many military cemeteries. It is always shocking to see so many graves lined up, and sad to go read some of the names, see their ages, and realize just how young they were when they died..

In this cemetery there were both French and German dead. Seeing them together in peace at last is poignant. We also noticed that although the graves of the opposing forces are separated, they are all facing the same direction. That is, they are no longer opposing each other.

Seeing these graves made us think forward, and backward, marveling at how many crazy wars have affected this area. Sure enough, down the road, a marker from the Franco-Prussian War. In that one (1870-71) the French declared war on Prussia and invaded. But the Prussians united with four other German states, under Bismarck, and came back to capture Napoleon III and Paris as well. 180,000 men are estimated to have died for no reason.

Our final war thing for the day came as we approached the small town of Coucy. High on a bluff above the town there is a huge ruin - that of the Château de Coucy. This was built in the thirteenth century, and was a typical castle housing the lords of the area. It was very large, however, rivalling castles that might have been put up by royalty. The town and the castle were occupied by the Germans in 1914. It became a fun outpost for military dignitaries. But in 1917 the retreating Germans destroyed it. There appeared to be no military reason for that, and war reparations were used to at least clear away the mess.

Part of the huge ruined chateau at Coucy.

We continued to absorb the general feel of the countryside, the villages, and farms. Here below is one nifty chimney that Dodie noticed.

The green tractor is dumping finely ground corn stalks, we think.

At Courson we stopped to talk to some goofy local residents.

Other than vast fields of corn, and also winter brassicas, the area had a lot of sunflowers. Sunflower seed has doubled in price for us in the last year. This field must be very valuable.

It would have been something to cycle through these guys when they were still in bloom.

The above photo is from not much after mid day. It is the last photo we have for the day, because what happened next was that the heavens opened with a prolonged and heavy rain. We had our rain jackets on, but not the pants, and so got even more thoroughly drenched than usual. When we finally dragged ourselves into the Auberge de Vauclair, the hostess, Natacha, said she had worried about us actually making it. Fortunately the room had a very large bathroom, where we dropped all our clothes and all our soggy, dripping gear. Unlike the cool showers of past days, it was then time for hot showers! We are now warm and mostly dry. Dodie asked if I was tired and I said no, because of the nice refreshing rain!

Today's ride: 77 km (48 miles)
Total: 845 km (525 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	12
Comment on this entry	Comment	0