June 22, 2012
The near-dead meet the real dead: Violay - Poncin
NEVER MISS A CHANCE to visit a French cemetery. You can forget the quiet and dignified headstones of elsewhere. In France, cemeteries are riots of weeping angels and of graves dotted with sincere but unmistakably bad-taste plastic tributes to "our uncle" and "our comrade, never forgotten."
We were at Villars-lès-Doubes. The unusual accent in the name changes it from 'the' to 'near'. It is near the river Doubs, which is also not without tricks because it’s pronounced Doo. We stopped at the cemetery because, in France, there is nearly always a tap for fresh water. It’s for flowers for graves but it tastes just as good in a bike-rider's bottle. We’d only just opened the heavy grey gates when we spotted something unusual: a row of war graves. They were right in front,to right of the gate.
Generally, French soldiers were buried where they fell, in mass cemeteries with discrete, dark crosses or other symbols. Above them is always a blue, white and red flag on a noticeably tall pole. How these men came to be buried here, we never found out.
Such graves are always emotional places but one was more than most. For on the same stone were what we took to be father and son, one killed in the first world war and the other in the second.
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'But look at this,' Steph shouted. We hurried over. Ten paces to the left there were three rows of tiny headstones. A children’s cemetery. A faded metal circle remembered a long-gone boy dead at a few weeks. Two young twins lay in a neighbouring plot, dead on different days but close together. Again, there was no explanation.
There is always sadness around gravestones. But never more so than with children.
Well, Geneva is already on the long-distance road signs. According to how well we go, we may get there in one long day or two easy ones. We crossed the Rhone today and that definitely means that, in French terms, we are in the back of beyond.
For once, our day has been a simple exercise in pedalling and enjoying ourselves. No monster hills,; no cols; no ear-popping descents. As Karen said: 'It's so heart-breaking to spend all morning working and then find you've only ridden 20 kilometres.'
We started our morning with a 14km descent from the col de la Croix Gasard. And from there the road was well-mannered, rising discreetly if it had to rise and only steeply when it felt it ought to insist. For most of the day we could spin our way through gentle countryside of no picture-postcard charm but far from being unappealing.
We could chat, we could ride at a tyre-humming speed and we could stop for drinks in cool cafés. Life was good today.
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