Day 44: Profondeville to Givet

September 22, 2024

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Our BnB did not include one "B", and to my relief the missing B was breakfast and not the bed. Dodie let them off the hook, saying that the place was a "chambre d'hotes" not a "BnB", giving them the possibility of skipping breakfast. Hmmph.

We rolled into the main part of Profondeville town to find the missing breakfast, and passed one bakery with no customers. But I opted for carrying on to the one by the grocery, where we could stop in as well. That bakery, though, featured a line down the street. It must be better, we reasoned. We also noted that at least half the customers had pre-ordered, and their stuff was bagged and waiting on the counter. Some also did not pay, and so must have been working with an account. All this did make the line move the more quickly for us, the unschooled interlopers.

A big part of the ride today were the various sheer cliffs that border the river on one side and then the other, all the way to Dinant and beyond. We took our breakfast treats down to the river and found a bench, from which there was a nice view of the first of the special cliffs for the day.

Heading through town to the river and the cliffs.

These are called the Rochers de Frenes, and though not visible in the photo, there are several named caves up there.

With the calmness of the water here in the early morning, the cliffs are very attractive.

As we began our cycle, we were keenly aware of how lonely we feel doing it, in a world that does not have Joni. But Dodie looked up and saw the light coming over the hills, and said "She is here" harkening to that song by India Arie that we had put up.

While we had branded Wallonia "grotty", particularly in regard to Liege, we now found that the beauty of the river was combining with the style of the Belgian houses to produce some very fetching scenes. The beauty grew and finally peaked at Dinant, as we will see.

The river makes these even more attractive.

The river also had things like this flock of Canada geese. We tried to choose the photo where the least number were picking their arm pits!

These were clearly preparing for a swimming race.

Now at Dinant we have the multicoloured riverside buildings, the oniond domed Notre Dame de Dinant church, and the citadel above.

The bridge is lined with national flags, and also saxaphones. The saxaphones are because the instrument was invented by Adolphe Sax, who was born in Dinant in 1814. He invented the instrument and patented it in the 1840's. There were various keys and styles. He also invented the saxotromba, saxhorn and saxtuba, and redesigned the bass clarinet . Today there are brass band concerts in and around Dinant, and a Sax birth house and museum.

Charles de Gaulle was injured here in 1914. The bridge, which has often been washed away by floods on the river, was rebuilt in 1953 and named for de Gaulle.

The Notre Dame church has a unique onion dome. The origin of the dome is that a city councillor had a house built on the bridge and wanted to put a dome on it. When the dome proved too heavy for the structure, it was transferred to the church. When the church was destroyed and rebuilt, they put a dome on it, even though this is not a traditional style for here.

As we prepared to go into the church for a look, we noticed a father and young son, both with rather fancy looking cameras. I snapped a surreptitious shot of the young boy, but Dodie approached father and son for a chat. They were clearly Vietnamese, speaking French.

Dodie has them entranced, but who knows what she is saying!

Father asked for a portrait of Dodie and son. We could take this kid on as our staff photographer - seeing as how all the kids we know are better than me. But when asked if he would like to go cycling, this one said he would rather stick with his dad.

Inside the Notre Dame church, there was much beautiful stained glass, one of those fancy altar pieces, a reliquary shiny head of St Perpete, and some interesting carving on the pulpit. Dodie picked up an 18 page booklet covering the whole thing, and with better photography than we have here. Sadly we can never carry such a booklet, which would be one of many, along with us.

I thought this carved lady had a rather modern hairdo.

We left the church and carried on through the town. We didn't find the Sax house/museum, but then we were not strenuously hunting for it. We did find a poster showing a statue of Sax, and were happy with that.

We did find a bakery selling what they called Couques de Dinant. We sent Dodie in and she came out with a "Coq" or chicken version. This confused us for some time. But a Coq is a rooster in French and a couque is apparently a cookie. It's a word we didn't know. When we got to our hotel and went for a nibble on our Coq/Couque is proved almost impossible to bite. The four generations of artisans who developed this had apparently independently invented hardtack.

The citadel and church rendered in de facto hardtack.

Further into Dinant, at city hall, we found a further saxaphone display, plus a large screen presentation about the sax and upcoming band performances in town.

large screen film about brass instruments

Further up the river now, we came to a unique rock pinacle:

and just for variety, these water-bicycles!

This brought us to the bridge over the Lesse, a tributary of the Meuse. Rich Frasier mentioned this river in a comment to Kathleen Classen's hair raising account of getting stuck on rocks in rapids in the Ardeche. He had had a similar experience, on this river years ago.

See, Rich, you can still rent a kayak here!

We soon had our own sort of river adventure as we came to this construction at a river crossing. Getting the heavy bikes up that track and onto the walkway was risky. A slip would have been ugly.

The successful crossing now allowed us to proceed up river:

We soon came to the chateau Freyr. This looked like a nice thing to visit, but we were more intrigued by the cliffs across the river, and by many who were attempting to climb them.

I like this shot, in which the climber seems to be having second thoughts, while the dog carefully considers which line he could take.

Further along we encountered a bac, which we did not need to take, that was similar to the one on the Authion, that we did with the kids.

After all this excitement, we found a bench and prepared belatedly eat our lunch. But now here came a man, who addressed us initially in French. But we soon found he was Thilo, from Stuttgart, and that we could all continue in English. Thilo wanted to know if the way was passable up ahead. We were at pains to show him our track, and the photos of the trauma on the bridge, advising him that if he took off all his bags, he could do it. From there, of course, we chatted on - about our routes, equipment, past trips, and all the things that cyclists find to talk about when they meet. and because Thilo had recently passed through Verdun, we included the senselessness of war, from WWI and before, to Ukraine.

Once Thilo headed off, and we continued in our direction, we saw why he had been concerned. We had been lunching behind a Route Barrée sign. That is why we could be a good source of info as to whether it was true or not. We hope he did understand that he had to cross the river at the first barrage, pass the chateau, and then cross on the difficult barrage. If somehow he continued to where the rock climbers were, he would never get through. Dodie is pretty sure she gave him a clear picture of what lay ahead. Thilo, if you are reading this, did you make it??

We ourselves soon crossed the (invisible) border into France. So that ended our Dutch and Belgian adventure. It was really fun!

They are trying to confuse us at the Belgian/French border with a windmill?

Next for us was a rail trail, that took us more or less to Givet. Signage that had been great in Netherlands and so so in Wallonia, now became non existent. But the GPS still took us to our hotel.

We actually don't have much food on this Sunday night, but we can gnaw on our Coq Couque!

Today's ride: 47 km (29 miles)
Total: 2,125 km (1,320 miles)

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Keith ClassenThat looks like a very interesting day with Joni looking down. Great photos!
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