..though I must admit it would have been a very long bike ride along this one, through the Dutch/Belgian border lands.
So instead we took the car and van, and found a cracking small campsite run by a Dutch-French couple. They provided a communal BBQ on Saturday evening, and some very smooth local champagne to wash it down – at 22 euros a bottle , a bargain.
A bit decadent, but felt we’d deserved it after a day’s bike tour round the local vineyard area ( 60km – only water was consumed or I wouldn’t have made it round ).
Scenery is ok, but a bit flat for us, the odd south facing slope being dedicated to vines. Surprising amount of industry too. Beautiful poppy fields, though, and a war memorial event was being prepared as we came though Vitry-le-Francois .
On Sunday we took a day trip into Reims. I was expecting it to be similar to the medieval character of Tours, which we visited last year, but actually a lot of it is in experimental art-Deco styles, having been rebuilt in the 1920s from huge amounts of destruction in WWI. There are still some classic older buildings too – most notably the vast cathedral, which was being cleaned up and beautifully restored.
Walking inside, it felt like it could swallow Durham cathedral whole – never seen vaulted ceilings so high.
For eight hundred years it was the place where French royalty was officially invested to lord it over the proles. I was tempted to think this sculpture by the front doors was a secretly radical objection to this approach – along the lines of the constitutional peasants sketch from the Holy Grail. Look at the two being ground underneath the great and good here –
“Oh, now we see the violence inherent in the system !”
And silent rebellion was also apparent in the dodgy hairstyle being sported by a gargoyle at the back of the building.
Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area. The park and ride system works well too, with a modern tram system for fans of public transport ( Matt).