Day 19: Reims to Soissons

September 14, 2023

Heart

Comment

Although this trip is certainly focused on getting to Spain our route is a bit zig zaggy as we have taken care to visit some of the major cities along the way. So having nipped over to Reims we are now returning west, retracing a small bit of the route before striking out anew, toward Rouen. This meant that in leaving Reims we in principle would face the tricky road with little room for bikes, and again the muddy track along the canal.

We really could find no way around the tricky road, so there we were again, either fighting it out with the cars or weaving through the pedestrians.

I would say this most resembles a meat grinder. You feed the bikes in along the marked track, and grind them up, preferably with the biggest truck available!

You can spice the mix with some chopped up school children. Here the drivers are advised to be on the lookout for them!

At the end of the tricky road is the supposed canal access, which is 6 km of farm field.

We looked at the field again and just could not do it!

We hopped on the big road (D944) instead, and were glad to find a shoulder.

Before long, we could turn off toward Courcy, and we could relax, for a while.

Courcy also has these clean white homes. It is clearly a suburb of Reims.

We made it back to the canal, and followed the same path we had done yesterday, back until striking off at Cormicy.

At Cormicy we came to the first of what would be many military grave sites encountered today. Each one remains a shock. At this one, there are 14,431 graves!

Looking across the crosses, we noticed that at one only there were some flowers. This was the grave of Alexis Hallier, who died in 1917. In "No Man's Land", Eric Bogle evokes the notion of fading memory of dead soldiers, or maybe the possibility that they live on in memory, never aging.

"And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind? In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined And though you died back in 1916 To that loyal heart are you always 19 Or are you just a stranger without even a name Forever enclosed behind some glass-pane In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?"

But now over 100 years later, the wife or sweetheart is also dead. So who put out the flowers for Alexis Hallier? It would be nice to know.

A lot of our road today was through quiet and pleasant farm land. But even so, it had some exciting farm things!

Here are more sunflowers. I wanted to show just how huge some of the heads had gotten. Lots of valuable seed in there!

And at one point we approached a pile of "something". At first we could not tell - rocks? potatoes?

When we came to our next date with a canal path, we looked down from the bridge and saw this. No way!

We started to wend out way through towns, heading generally for Soissons. Below we see Concevreux.

Somewhere before Oeuilly we faced a traditional "Route Barrée". We never know quite how serious they are about these, until we try. This one looked tough, but we made it through!

At Soupir we ran into a German cemetery.

We noted one Jewish stone . Sigmund Meyer was not listed as a shooter or artillery man, but only as a "Private". There is an inscription in Hebrew, but we have not been able to get a reasonable translation. Anybody?

This Jewish casualty on the German side corresponds in his situation to Dodie's grandfather. The only difference is that that grandfather was never found, or at least there is no record. He likely died on the Somme in 1918.

Not the last cemetery for the day, but the last we'll report on, was an Italian one. Showing our ignorance of history, we wondered on whose side these poor folks were fighting. Now, after reading several paragraphs abut the subject, it seems they were fighting for the French and British. This is despite having been in an alliance with Germany and Austro-Hungary at the beginning. I mentioned to Dodie how sad and stupid it is to have to "read the hand out pamphlet " to know exactly who you are supposed to shoot at today.

They died here over some squabble in Trentino or Trieste, or something.

We had to jump on one more not so fun road before arriving at Soissons.

Our B&B is just below a ruined abbey and not far from the cathedral. Perhaps we will see them tomorrow, but now it's time for a rest!

Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 974 km (605 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	10
Comment on this entry	Comment	0