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| Can you see the dream? |
Karen was back at work on Monday, and I wanted to get on with some painting, but it was really grey and threatening rain, so I took Buddy for a walk instead. I wore jeans for the first time this autumn but by the time we came back the sun was out, so it was back to shorts, and it also meant I could get on with the painting. I managed to get a bit more done on Tuesday morning and then spent most of the afternoon travelling back to Épinal to pick up the car. For once the train journeys, with a break at Nancy, and the return car journey were uneventful, and I wasn’t even asked to show my Covid pass which passengers have to carry on public transport. In fact, the Covid pass (passe sanitaire) is mandatory for access to most public places in France such as bars, restaurants and museums.
In addition to getting the car I had to
start the ball rolling on replacing Karen’s UK phone and carte de séjour that were
at the bottom of a lock on the canal de la Marne au Rhin. As we have a spare phone on the boat it was simply
a case of replacing her SIM but as expected, the phone company wouldn’t send it
to France. The solution was for Polly to
pick it up and post to it us and she has now done that so it’s winging its way
to France. Replacing the carte de séjour
will be more problematical, not least the fact that it costs €225, but there is
a volume of paperwork to put together. A
saving grace is that it can all be done online so that will make the process
simpler.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll recall
we’ve been staying at the ‘grim’ mooring in Commercy. By Tuesday evening we’d been there for four
days and we had to admit that we’d rather got used to the it and at least we
didn’t get any passers-by.
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| The 'grim' place |
We also decided that the view wasn’t too
bad on the opposite side considering we were in a town and it was also very
quiet, so we did alright as they say.
One of my walks during the last four days
took me back to a weir on the Meuse that we’d passed on our way into
Commercy. When we went by, we noticed a
cottage on the opposite side to the weir and had been too interested in the
life size fishermen set along the canal side, including one with just his legs
protruding from the water. We hadn’t
noticed a plaque on the cottage that reads, ‘COMMERCY BARRAGISTE’. It’s amazing to think that the guy
responsible for the weir was supplied with a tied cottage back in the day.
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| One fishermen under the parasol and the upturned legs to the right |
Wednesday saw us up early ready to leave before 9.00am. That was until the engine refused to start, all we got was the sound of the starter solenoid clicking on and off. I checked the electrical connections and they all seemed fine, so I surmised that the starter battery had lost power. Luckily, we have a set of jump leads for this sort of occasion and I connected the starter battery to the domestic battery bank and the engine started immediately. It seems we have an issue with the starter battery retaining its charge and I suppose it’s over five years old now so probably a replacement is due.
We realised that we hadn’t run the engine
in Commercy for a couple of days as we’d been using the solar panels to top up the domestic batteries; they don't top up the starter battery. Normally, we either run
the engine for an hour a day to charge all the batteries and provide hot water or we’re hooked up to power in a port that keeps all the batteries topped up and the immersion heater going. We decided to
leave worrying about a replacement until we reached Verdun which is a much
larger town than Commercy and will have a better selection of batteries
available.
It was a lovely sunny day if a tad chilly to start with, especially in the shady spots. Our journey alternated between sections of river and sections of cut. A lot of the cut was quite narrow and very weedy which necessitated a few trips to the weed hatch.
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| Canal section |
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| Canal a bit more open here |
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| A stretch of river looking quite autumnal |
It was definitely a kingfisher day. We haven’t seen many over the last few weeks, but they were certainly making up for it, especially on the river bits. Sometimes we could see three at once and I would say that they are more numerous on this part of the Meuse than they were on the Bristol Avon which was the previous record holder as far as we were concerned.
On one of the weed hatch stops we were
able to temporarily pull in at a pontoon at a place called Sampigny. It looked rather a pleasant place to moor,
and we would have stayed if it had been a bit later in the day.
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| Temporary tie up at Sampigny |
An éclusier was waiting for us at one of the locks and wanted to know what our plans were for the next few days. He explained that after St-Mihiel, our target for the day, the locks were manually operated for a while and he would be seeing us through. This would be the first time we’ve been in manually operated locks since we were on the canal de Bourgogne in summer 2019. We will have to get back into the swing of agreeing our plans with our éclusier at the end of each day so he can be ready at the first lock when we set of again.
Soon after lunch we were approaching
St-Mihiel, and we could see the town mooring on the right. We could also see a likely looking building
on the bank of the river on the left.
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| Approaching St-Mihiel |
Yes, it was a lavoir and it was the first time we’ve been moored opposite one on a river. We’ve been alongside them on a few canals but there’s something special about a riverside lavoir.
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| Our view from the dining table |
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| Moored on the Meuse at St-Mihiel |
On Wednesday we cruised 14 miles down five
locks.
I rang VNF first thing on Thursday as we’d
decided to stay put in St-Mihiel for another day to do some exploring so I needed
to cancel the arrangement to meet our éclusier at 10 o’clock. Before I could make a new arrangement for Friday
morning the guy asked me if I was aware that the canal des Ardennes was due to
close for works from 4th October to 12th November. This was news to us, and we couldn’t
understand how we’d missed it. We’d
planned to be cruising along the Ardennes during October but were now going to
have to rethink our itinerary so I told the guy we would call him later with
our new plans.
We both made posts on a couple of boaters’
social groups and also got in touch with friends who are further up the Meuse,
but it transpired that no one knew about the closure. Anyway, we decided to carry on travelling
north on the Meuse and then retrace our steps upstream back to Toul and then
head west along the canal de la Marne au Rhin.
I rang the guy back and when he knew it was me again, he immediately
apologised and said he’d given me the wrong information earlier; it was the river
Meuse that was closing from the Belgian border and not the canal des Ardennes. We knew this already and also knew that it
didn’t impact us, so I made arrangements to continue our journey as originally
planned on Friday morning.
Our bridge lessons were restarting at 11
o’clock after the summer break so first we made a trip to the tourist office to
pick up a town trail leaflet and even had time to see some of the sights before
bridge started. Sadly, the photos we
took didn’t really come out as nearly all of them had to be taken into the
glaring sun.
For the most part, St-Mihiel is a pretty
town with 4,000 inhabitants and plenty of old buildings and interesting
architecture. It was heavily involved in
both world wars, and I remembered the name from history lessons at school. Those of you with more knowledge than me of
WWI will know what the St-Mihiel Salient was whereas I just remembered it as a
name in a boring (as I thought at the time) history lesson. It was formed when the Germans managed to
push forwards 20km past the French lines in September 1914. Heavy battles raged there during most of the
war and being remote countryside, little will have changed since those days.
Here are the pictures that just made the
cut:
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| Market halls rebuilt in 1902 |
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| The original hôtel de ville built in 16th century although the front façade dates from 1781 |
Another 16th century house, this one was built for the bishop of Verdun and was one of many occupied by the Germans in WWI:
This gargoyle house was built in 1554 and
was another taken over by the Germans:
Many of the streets were quiet but the
bars and restaurants in the squares seemed very popular.
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| A quieter street |
The Benedictine abbey and associated buildings are now used for offices including the current hôtel de ville.
Following the bridge session, we had lunch and then set out on our main quest of the day, a six mile walk to visit some WWI trenches that can still be found in the Bois d’Ailly, woods to the east of the town. I have to add that they were not mentioned by the tourist office, but I had found out about them when reading up on the Battle of Verdun, a town we will be visiting soon.
Apart from the first section through the
town our walk took us along farm tracks all the way with wonderful views up and
down the Meuse valley. In addition to
the views, we were delighted to see so many butterflies on the wing which, in
retrospect, made a stark contrast to what we would see in the woods.
Upon reaching the woods the first thing
we saw was a monument which was built in 1923 to honour those lost at the
battles of Bois d’Ailly and Apremont Forest.
In front of it was an ossuary containing the bones of unnamed soldiers
and the plaques have been placed by families who lost someone and believe they
lie in the ossuary.
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| The monument and ossuary at Bois d’Ailley |
Through the other side of the woods stood another monument, this one in honour of those men from two particular regiments who lost their lives in the woods. The monument of Tranchée de la Soif (trench of thirst), so named due to the lack of provisions:
The trenches criss-crossed the woods and with nobody else around it felt incredibly sombre but at the same time peaceful. Of course, the trenches changed hands many times as advances were made and lost and we couldn’t help thinking how heart-breaking it must have been to lose a trench you’d been involved in digging. Mind you that was probably the last thing on a soldier’s mind at the time it happened. Walking along the trenches themselves brought it back to us how they were dug in a squared zigzag fashion to avoid standing in a line of fire from one end or the other. Here are a few shots of the trenches:
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These are the views of the Meuse valley from the woods:
We walked back to St-Mihiel following the same farmtracks and having been in the sun all afternoon we were pretty tired when we got back to the boat so just relaxed for the rest of the day.
1 comment:
Read regularly pleased to know all is well. best wishes. Wendy
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