Spring has Sprung
/Week 33 — April 1st - 18th (Tony).
Generally, we have never been attracted to big cities, preferring the rustic charm of small towns and villages where things have remained unchanged for eons and life is less hectic. There are exceptions of course: New York, London, Barcelona, Lyon and Paris; but staying in cities such as these can be expensive and stressful. So imagine cruising right into the very centre of Paris in your boat, with all the comforts of home including wardrobes, pantry, even slippers, as well as bikes, and mooring in a secure harbour within sight of the Colonne de Julliet in the Place de la Bastille. For a few days Paris was home and we explored the city as we have never been able to do before — on bicycle, foot and métro — discovering, quite by accident, the posh end of town where all the brand-name shops have stunning window displays but no price tags. If you can afford to shop here the cost doesn't matter! We couldn't resist indulging in a cup of coffee and a patisserie that was to die for — at a price that would have fed an African child for a year; and some chocolates from a chocolatier's shop that was so sensational it would have been more sinful to pass it by.
Cycling around Paris is so easy, and safe. At some exhorbitant expense the city granted a company the rights to set up bike stands all over the city, with hundreds of bikes too ugly to steal, where anyone can take one with the mere swipe of a credit card and drop it back to any other stand whenever and wherever one chooses. The council has established bikeways along most inner-city streets and along the river etc, sometimes sharing lanes with buses and taxis. It's fabulous. London is now considering doing the same. We had our own bikes of course and I can vouch that a sore crutch is preferable to being footsore after walking the distances we covered.
Cruising down the Seine was an exhilarating, if somewhat nerve wracking experience. The Seine is a big, living river and was flushed with higher than normal water from several weeks of rain in its upper catchment so bobbing along at 13km/h was no problem with the engine barely ticking over. In addition to contending with the ebb flow there are many enormous commercial barges on the river, often coupled in tandem, sometimes so laden they are barely afloat, that power past at more than 20km/h both upstream and downstream. Some have elevating wheelhouses that can be raised to enable the skipper to see over the bow. The locks on the Seine are humungous but having to share one with these big buggers is, at first, rather daunting as they're not to be messed with and have absolute right of way. It was just as well that I rang ahead and booked a berth at Port d'Arsenal in Paris as a number of small pleasure craft were finding making their way upstream a struggle against the current and had sought refuge there until the river subsided so the port was practically full to capacity. A surprising number of people live there permanently. I guess it's cheaper than renting a unit or trying to buy real estate in Paris.
After leaving Paris I was concerned that once we turned off the Seine to head up l'Oise we might have difficulty against the current but, though still a fairly big river, its flow was nothing like the Seine's. For all that they're exciting to sail, rivers tend to be rather boring as the banks are mostly densely lined with trees that obscure any view, and as with railways, when you come to a town it is often the ugly industrial side that you see. We were relieved therefore to find that soon after the confluence with the Aisne we were once again in a canal built alongside l'Oise. The Canal du Nord carries a lot of commercial traffic but it's wide, tranquil and overlooks gorgeous farmland that stretches for miles.
We arrived in Compiegne expecting a small town but were surprised to find a large city with so many spectacular things to see. The chateau, right in the town centre, is huge with vast, beautifully landscaped gardens and was a favourite of Louis XVI who used to host grand hunting events in the nearby forest; and later Napoleon. A few miles out of town, Napoleon III bought a ruined castle in the mid-eighteen hundreds which he had restored by Viollet le Duc. Obviously he had no budget restrictions as the resulting castle is one of the most stunningly beautiful we've ever seen. Talk about a fairy tale castle. Walt Disney was apparently inspired by mad Ludwig's palace in Bavaria, but he would have been impressed, as we were, with Pierrefonds. They were using the castle for filming Merlin while we were there.
And just a few further miles down the road we came across the recreated train carriage where Marshall Foch and the allies met with German generals to sign the armistice on November 11, 1918. Hitler humiliated the French when he used the same carriage when they surrended to Germany in 1940. The original carriage was taken back to Berlin but was destroyed by allied bombing. The restored replica is now contained within a fascinating museum full of memorabilia from both wars. Most interesting were the newspapers of the time.
We are now on the Somme, in Péronne, a pretty town that was evacuated after it fell behind enemy lines early in WWI. It was blasted to smithereens by French artillery during the allied attack to drive Germany back across the Somme and to eventual defeat in late 1918. We had planned to cruise to Amiens but decided to stay here as we have already visitied Amiens and will be returning for a tour of the cathedral (the biggest in France) and the ball at the finale of the Our Other ANZAC Day Tour. Newspapers, shops and businesses are displaying Aussie flags and welcome signs in anticipation of next week's events. We're looking forward to it.