Day 7: Revin to Charleville - Mezieres, France - Grampies Ride Again! Summer 2015

July 28, 2015

Day 7: Revin to Charleville - Mezieres, France

The common room at the Revin municipal camping came through again this morning, as we had indoor table and chair space in which to make breakfast and get organized. It was cool but not raining, so quite pleasant all around.

We had told ourselves last night that we would check out the town in the morning, so we dutifully headed up the narrow cobbled streets. Despite having made breakfast in the common room, we were also on the lookout for the bakery, just on general principles. We did not find the bakery - unusual, since our ant trail method almost always works. We did find a market, but it was just setting up.

We were content to just ride through the town a bit. It was picturesque, with the signature narrow streets and stone buildings of this region. A special feature was the tunnel that is on the way out of town. It cuts off a big loop of the river, saving about 4 km. The tunnel is 224 meters long and was built in the 1870's. It was almost too dark in the middle to see, making it like the tunnels of the Hiawatha - from our previous blog.

We did find that bakery down the river, at Montherme. They are all great, but the bread at this one looked particularly super. we bought some sandwiches on baguettes, and the baguettes turned out to be good as well. We sat on a ledge outside the bakery and ate some additional goodies, watching the customers come and go. An amazing number of baguettes walked out in the few minutes we were there. Some people had three, and we speculated whether they had large families, were just being piggy, or were too lazy to return in the evening for their evening bread. Then we noticed a sign advertising the baguettes at 3 for €2, which probably explains a lot. The normal baguette price is 80 euro cents each, so this was a good deal!

The railroad bridge in an old photo.The path has been much improved!

Look Sandra, some of our favourite stuff! (Montherme)

This church at Montherme was fortified. There were slits in the walls for shooting out.

Kids passing us may have been in camp. They get them started cycling early here.

High on a hill above Bogny, the next town down, was a statue devoted to the Four Sons of Aymon. This refers to a crazy and extended legend cycle from this region, in which Bogny figures. I used the telephoto feature for my camera to get a shot up the mountain, but see now that a dopey tourist was actually standing up there, in the way!

The Aymon Brothers statue high above Bogny

At a lock we came to a sign saying watch for dog. You can actually see the dog in this photo

Steve has a word with the dog about blocking the road

Now they are friends (but the dog never moved)

There were parts of the ride again today that felt a bit like wilderness, but generally there was a town coming up within every hour we cycled. The path continued immaculate. We were surprised when our gps and maps told us that it was time to turn for Charleville, and there was no signage at all. We took the turn, over a bridge, and found sevèral bikeways, none signed, on the other side. we took the advice of maps and gps, and some Dutch cyclists a little further on, and arrived nicely at the town camping, called Mont Olympe.

This was top flite camping, with a huge common room, wifi, restaurant, bread delivery, washer/dryer, and large covered areas. €14.

We set up our tent and headed into town to see the sights.The centre of town is called Place Ducale. This is a square formed by large squarish elegant French palatial type buildings. Offsetting that formality nicely was the use to which the square was being put. It had been transformed into a kids' beach, with areas of sand, and various types of water play. we especially liked the big balloons floating in a pool. The kid goes in, and it is like a hamster in a cage as they roll around. Just as with the bouncy castle in the last blog, though, we did not see any kids really get tired from this.

The next big thing was the pedestrian street, which leaves from the square and extends two long blocks to one more square. As with Namur, this was not really something special. The next square did feature a statue of the founder of the town.Although the date given for the founding on the statue is 1608, the town actually did exist here in some form since the 10th century. Even in 1608, I guess it was hard to record what someone looked like, for this fellow looked just like statues of Samuel de Champlain, founder of Quebec City. Champlain did his founding stuff July 3, 1608.

From the second square we could see down into Mezieres, the sister city, and site of the Basilica Being able to see it gave us courage to try to reach it. Unfortunately, outside of the Voie Verte, this area does not seem big on bikes, and we had to fight traffic and use sidewalks. The Basilica was worth it, though. When you step in you are immediately aware of the extent of the light, and then of the stained glass windows that are providing the light. There are 66 windows, all done by Rene Durrbach, a friend/associate ? of Picasso, between 1954 and 1979. They are all in a modern Picasso-like style, but there are numerous writeups about use of symbols - squares, ovals, circles, crosses, spirals, etc etc set with meaningful colours to represent various religious themes or stages in the life of Jesus. Ok, Rene, if you say so. But actually windows were quite stunning.

A big contrast to the newish windows was the extreme deterioration of the exterior. Ok, so the building is 500 years old, and was bombed in 1815, 1870,1914, 1918, and 1944, but three are saplings growing from window ledges!

We had the idea of blowing some of our savings from reasonably priced camping on a restaurant meal, but as we toured the establishments around the square, we found we could not totally understand the menus, and the prices at about €18 were too steep for us. So we bought some salads at a butcher, and some frites from the restaurant at the camping, and together with a quiche we dug out of our bag, called it a good dinner. We dined, of course, in the luxury common room!

We put Dodie to bed just before I started to write this. With the winds and great ideas like going to the basilica, (right now!), she is getting too worn out. I am sure she will leap from her air mattress tomorrow, though, ready to go again!

Building style around the Charleville main square

Beach in the main square at Charlesville

we would have liked to take the grandkids here!

The quite short walking street of Charleville

at the marionnette institute, this big gold puppeteer will perform on the hour. Meanwhile he slowly looks left and right in a creepy way

The performance of the big gold figure. He told a story to go with the action but we could not catch it.

all the colours and symbols mean something

deterioration of the outside of the Basilica. Lots of figures and features are almost all worn away.

dodie had this great idea about a shortcut, so I ended by carrying the bikes down many steep steps!

Heading home to our tent. You can see interesting buildings of Mezieres, but also that it is not at all bike friendly

Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 300 km (186 miles)

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