Day 30: Lille to Oudenaarde

September 8, 2024

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Coming into Lille was pretty chaotic for us yesterday, and we just kind of photographed anything we saw, without knowing what it was. The crowds of people also made it hard to maneuver around with the bikes, and to get quite the desired angle for some photos.

Today we thought we would calmly circle around the main sights, and know exactly what we were shooting. We did that, and you can see the results below. But I don't think it worked out as well as planned. Early on a Sunday morning, there was nobody about, and with their absence the excitement of the whole place was largely gone. Also, we may not have re=captured some of the interesting places we stumbled on yesterday. Still, we had a nice 5 km ride around the old centre and found it overall very interesting.

In front of our hotel, the spire of the St Maurice church was illuminated in the early sun.

Scott had commented that yesterday we got a photo of the bell tower of Lille city hall. Apparently bell towers are a "thing" and there is a UNESCO list of the greatest ones in France and Belgium.

The Paris Gate. Louis XIV attacked Lille in 1668, when (I think) it was controlled by Spain. He took the city and erected a Triumphal Arch. This is the structure we see today.

I tried to find something attractive about the Paris Gate, for example zooming in on the sculptures at the top. But really, those sculptures are a tangled mess!

It turned out that we had been looking at the "butt end" of the Paris Gate (Gate butt!). Around the front, it does look a bit more triumphal. and Ok, at the top there are some figures, clearly blowing their own or somebody else's horns.

Lille city hall. This is a rebuild from WW I, and probably dates from before 1932 - when the bell tower that stands to the left of the photo was inaugurated.

Palais des Beaux Arts. This stands on the other side of a large square from city hall.

This is a bronze equestrian statue of General Louis Faidherbe, born in Lille, who resisted the Prussian invaders during the war of 1870.The statue was erected in 1896. Its base represents the city of Lille dictating to History the great deeds of the general, victorious at Bapaume."

Rue de Béthune. They say people come from Paris to shop here, but we think that is hype. Maybe if there would be a crowd in the street it would seem more exciting.

La Vieille Bourse, on a corner of the main square. It was built in the mid 17th century.

The Grand Plaza - basically the centre of old Lille.

Colonne de la Déesse. "A commemorative monument, inaugurated on October 8, 1845 , in the center of the Grand'Place of Lille , today Place du Général-de-Gaulle , in the French department of Nord in the Hauts-de-France region .The monument, which commemorates the heroism of the people of Lille during the siege of Lille in 1792 by the imperial army , is composed of a column and a statue of a woman at its top.In her right hand she holds a fire starter, used to light the fuse of the cannons, and points with her left to the inscription on the base which repeats the response of the mayor of Lille, François André-Bonte , refusing the surrender of the besieged city to the Imperials, on September 29, 1792."

Some miscellaneous buildings on Rue de la Grande Chaussée

Now at last we come to the cathedral. But waaa, it's the most boring on we have seen. To be fair, there are some older, fancy bits around back.

Here on rue de la Monnaie is the "Hospice Comtesse Museum", which used to be a hospital. Behind the main gates are apparently several buildings from 15th to 18th centuries, now housing art collections.

The big doors lead to a complex of museum buildings.

Place aux Oignons - contains not onions but art galleries.

The House of Gilles de la Boë. This is a "Flemish Mannerist" style building built in 1636 on behalf of Gilles de la Boë, a merchant in spices and fabrics.

Content that we had now seen a fair chunk of the 13 places mentioned by our great app "GPS My City" for Lille in their Introduction to the city, we set our sights on getting out of town.

We had good bike lanes for most of the way, but this did not mean that the end of town was coming at all soon.

Things continued like this for many kms.

On bit of excitement came when we encountered the runners of a quite large 10k, a benefit for a local hospital.

The racers, as often is the case, were supported by at least two bands.

Fitting for a hospital run, participants carried along with them some very young and some disabled.

See the runners holding the wooden bars? There is a thing at Lourdes where people are carried even over mountains like this.

Our road opens again, with the 10k behind, but we are still not out of town.

Now we are getting somewhere! With about 20 km logged, we hit the canal that will take us the rest of the way.

Quite soon on the canal, we hit Belgium - specifically Wallonia. The RAVel is the Belgian cycle route system.

Usually when the Grampies come to a blocade on the route, they make a lonely decision on what to do about it. But here we had a whole herd of cyclists, and the consensus - bust the thing down and let's get on with the ride!

See, RAVel wanted us to detour to the right.

This is the barricade at the far end. There had been one very small area where the pavement had collapsed - no problem, at all!

We now have clear sailing by the canal, for quite a few kms.

We are on the Schelde and this is called the Scheldt Route

The route runs to Antwerp. I think we are following it there!

One surprising bit, which is illustrated a bit by the above map, is that while we were immersed in French in Lille, and rather thought that French would persist for a bit as we rode into Belgium, in fact we had quickly crossed out of (french speaking) Wallonia and into maybe Flanders. The language of Flanders is a Dutch variant called Flemish. By the time we came off the Schelde canal and into our small town stay for the night at Oudenaarde, French was nowhere to be seen, and people who spoke to us spoke in English!

We landed right in the main square of Oudenaarde, and found a large and noisy fun fair in progress. This somewhat obscured its main feature, which was an ornate, Belgian style, city hall.

The houses near the square also had a unique Belgian flavour, and there was one particularly ornate, and old one:

Of course, one item high on our list was to find and try some "Belgian fries". A fun fair is a good place for this, and here was our chosen stand:

Not so cheap, at €4.50. Also they charge for even ketchup - a hefty 1 euro!

But, it was good, and much different than McDonald's and also Montreal fries.

Something at the fun fair caught our attention - a kind of super enabled trampoline experience. We wondered if the Montreal grandkids would have liked it.

In this corner of the square we got a closer look at the glitzy city hall.

But in the other corner was the more sober Saint Walburga church. We went inside for a quick peek:

Although worked on in subsequent centuries, the church seems to have been begun in the 14 century.

It's nice, but we may be a bit churched out just now. That will prob ably change in Ghent!

We got only a message machine when phoning our "hotel", a place lacking reception and quoting check in at 17:00. But we left the noise of the fun fair and circled around to the place. A man who seemed like the owner was just coming out, and so, we were in! The heat in the afternoon and the noise in the square had tired us out, so were were glad to settle in to the extremely large and airy room. For tomorrow, we are excited to be in such a different country, with language, architecture, and food (when and if we find it) not at all like France.

Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,291 km (802 miles)

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John FlecknerThanks for the Lille tour. Never been there but imagined it only as an industrial city. Clearly has its attractions
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2 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo John FlecknerLike so many other old European cities, the old centre often retains some of its charm even when surrounded by modern housing and industry.
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2 months ago

Karen Poret👌.. no more “ stepping in it”.. 😬
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2 months ago

Suzanne GibsonToo bad you didn't get to the Tour of Flanders Museum, about the famous cobble stone bike race, in Oudenaarde. We loved it. https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/flandersfling/oudenaarde-sitting-it-out/
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2 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Suzanne GibsonWe will have to pencil it in for another trip.
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2 months ago