Day 47: Remilly-Aillicourt to Consenvoye

September 25, 2024

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Dodie was reading to me from a fascinating blog last night. It was from 2015 and was called Grampies Ride Again. Apparently the Grampies had swarmed all over the Meuse, on their unassisted folding bikes no less. They knew all about the Ardennes, and shockingly, they went into Charleville-Mezieres, and gave complete coverage of the Basilica, that friend of Picasso, and so on. There were many things that Grampies 2024 seemed to weak to do. Another example, Grampies 2015 knew all about the legend of the Aymon Brothers, at Bogny. They provided this photo of the memorial up on the mountain:

By contrast, look what Grampies 2024 offered on this yesterday:

The fact that we remember none of this is good in a sense. Europe is pretty small, and there is a risk that we will use up all the good routes. But if we can completely forget one in just nine years, we will have an unlimited supply!

When we were last here, the voie verte only extended to Charleville, and we ended on some dangerous 900 level D roads. Michael Hutching has also commented that in 2018 roads were not good, and he bailed at Verdun. Today we thought the voie verte would extend a bit beyond Remilly-Aillicourt, but no, so we ended with being on road for the whole day. We were following EV 19, though, and the roads while not great, were not totally terrifying.

Not totally terrifying, but you do need to stay calm!

The fact that were on road did not mean that we were not following the Meuse, only that there was no path by the river. In the photo below, you see that we are up on a ridge, and can look down at the river.

But yes, as we say, it was on road, and not even with a white line on the right, so I can not invoke my usual grouse about "riding the white line".

We were clearly now out of the Ardennes mountains, and were in rolling pasture and corn land. It was to be sure very pretty.

Pasture and corn, with forest well back.

Yes, it does look like rather idyllic riding. We need to rain on this assessment a bit by pointing out that we also had rain, and quite strong headwinds throughout the day.

The route offered towns every few kms, but almost without exception they had no commerce. That rather dampened our interest in them. The guide book we had picked up did try to entice us with a felt museum, in Mouzon, a beer museum in Stenay, and the "Green Holiday Resort" ambitions of Dun-sur-Meuse, for example. We resisted all these "Must see" items from the book, but were really tickled by the organic bakery in Dun. They enticed us with a really nice curry chicken and vegetables baguette sandwich!

One place that did get our attention was Beaumont en Argonne. This was not so much for its closed 12th century Romanesque church, but for its claims to dozens of good hiking routes, out in the direction of Luxembourg. Not that we are hikers, but we thought, ooh, Rachael Anderson would like this. On the other hand, we spotted no hotels around, so the Andersons would be hard pressed to hang out and try the routes.

St Jean Baptiste Romanesque church in Beaumont.

They had dozens of proposed walks in the area.

The cattle in the fields were often white ones, with the bulls looking extremely muscular. We assume these were Charollais, though we are 400 km from Charolles.

While I took the shot of these two cute youngsters, their mother came over and gave me the evil eye. Had I entered the field, she probably would have called their 2500 pound father over to have a word with me.

Our route continued like this. Since you can't see the wind, it looks great!

Near Luzy St Martin we encountered a sign signalling Route Barée in 2 km. We ignored that, of course. Then there was another one, warning of the closure in 1 km. We hate that, because if the road is really blocked, then the backtrack is rather long. When we reached the actual blockage, a sign offered a bicycle detour of 5 km. When you are tired from fighting wind and hills, 5 km can seem an awfully long distance. But in the distance we could see two workers. Dodie sent me on ahead to talk to them to see if maybe we could sneak through. They said yes we could, but the detour would be more scenic. I told them that for 5 km I did not care about scenery. So I gestured to Dodie to come on down, using big motions of my arms. There was no reaction from Dodie, way down at the first barricade signs. This was strange, because I know she had that telescopic vision, that can spot a buzzard at 300 feet. The workers looked on and said it looks like she does not want to come. So I cycled all the way back, to get her. "Didn't you see me waving? What happened to that telescopic vision?", I whined. "I was looking at my screen", was the reply. "I'm having to cycle this stretch 4x because you are watching TV?" I whined again. "It's not 4x, it's 3x" was the reply. Who knew, I married as mathematician!

The road was fine, the blockade of gravel was all there was.

Part of the scenery that maybe we would have seen on the detour was this church, Notre Dame de l'Assomption, which we spied standing off by itself in the distance. The 20x zoom brought it in closer.

Church seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

We rolled into Consenvoye, our stop for the night, and I think I took this shot there. But when I checked with Google Lens, it seemed to say there are dozens of French towns that look like that. I thought I would be clever and would see if there was a "Cafe du Centre" in Consenvoye. Well there is, but there is probably one in 100's of towns. Even so, we can safely say this is what Consenvoye looked like.

Consenvoye only has one bit of commerce, if we ignore the controversial Cafe du Centre, and that is a gas station. But the gas station has a little convenience section, and we found an extra sandwich there. Beside the gas station were the two other commercial ventures of the town - a kiosk that makes pizza, and a kiosk that dispenses baguettes. The pizza thing was out of order, but apparently if you put a euro in the baguette machine it will spit out an (of course) artisanal, home made baguette. We didn't need a baguette, because we had bought that sandwich at the gas station, so we can't comment on what, if anything, comes out. I would like to try that pizza sometime, though. They are artisanal too, the kiosk says. Lots of artisans hiding in these little boxes!

Major commercial undertakings of Consenvoye.

Today's ride: 73 km (45 miles)
Total: 2,330 km (1,447 miles)

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