Adventure Before Dementia: Back to France, at last.

A Whirlwind trip through Belgium and down the valley of the Somme.
We are about to hit the road and head back from Troyes in France to Namur in Belgium, 4.5 hours driving.

But Here are a few random reflections from La France.......

Walking into a cafe in the very first town across the border and feeling the difference.

It's midday and the townsfolk are knocking off work for the next two and a half hours to eat, drink, talk and laugh with a lot of kissing and hugging.

We walked into the first cafe we found and ordered coffee and pizza and were welcomed in like locals.

One man came to us and when he found we were from NZ, insisted on buying us drinks.

The buildings and the people in the north of France and the valley of the Somme carry the battle scars from the last couple of wars and there is a palpable feeling that the loss and the grief are still causing distress today.

There are graveyards with white crosses as far as the eye can see and fresh flowers on the memorials to the young men lost from every town.

It is a long flat landscape and we are almost prepared to meet a platoon of bedraggled soldiers marching across the countryside to their next trench position on the battle front.

Wheat and rapeseed seem to be the crops that thrive on these flatlands where so much blood has been spilled.

Despite the air of despair, France is still very beautiful this time of year with the amazing intensity of green that meets you around every corner.

Villages come and go, each with their disproportionately large sized church and hotel de ville, or town hall, and streets of stone cottages in various stages of repair, (or disrepair).

You definitely get the feeling that French people would much rather eat, drink and laugh a lot, than spend all their leisure time repairing and immaculately painting their houses, like the Dutch.

There is the definite impression that they are surrounded by their own crumbling history, but it is so very charming and their way of life is definitely the benchmark for the rest of civilization.

I literally ran into the very first boulangerie that I could find in France and bought a long baguette and tore it open to see if French bread really was as good as I remembered.

People walking past smiled and called “bon appetite” when they saw the look on my face.

Yes it is as good as it gets.

Why can we not make bread that is so crusty on the outside yet flexible and tasty on the inside?

The beautiful valley town of Pierrefonds in the Picardy region has a fantasy castle on the highest point of the land overlooking the town, built in 1393, that’s quite a long time ago, and it is visible from every part of the village.

We almost stumbled upon the town as we were driving from Noyon to Troye across the top of France and through the forest of the Compiegne.

When we saw the castle above the town we just had to stop and spend a few hours mingling with the French families on their holidays visiting this incredible piece of history.

French people are incredibly helpful, gracious and friendly. When we almost ran out of petrol and were failing to make an automatic machine accept our credit cards, a French man nearby saw our problem and filled our tank on his card. When we gave him 50 Euro, he went to his car and came back with the change. They are so very decent.

We finally found the river Meuse and followed it north through the Ardennes region, full of forests and steep gorges with little alpine villages on either side.

This is the river that we will come down from Holland into Belgium and then to France.

The villages are well maintained and the river seems to dominate life around here, as it has for centuries.

The Meuse has been an important trading route and strategic military focal point for thousands of years and when you enter a town like Givet, through the fortified city gates you are very aware of this.

We followed the river into Belgium to the delightful town of Dinant where mansions line the river banks and canal barges meander their way through locks and the wide green waterways.

At the end of the day we are settling into a grande old chateaux set above the city of Namur, feeling almost like something out the Victorian era.

We were very lucky to find a room in a hotel here because there is a fortnight of festivities in this town.

We are sitting in an ancient castle drinking champagne from France, eating French bread, Dutch cheese, Italian olives, Spanish tomatoes and strawberries from Belgium.

This is the life.