I am awoken throughout night by lack of decent pillow am sure will have cricked neck in morning. Then the nearest and sounding very near cockrel starts up along with his more distant cousins and his friends the geese and all sorts of other things. The peace of the countryside! I rise at 6:30 and walk along the canal next to which we are camped at. A plaque tells me that this is where Wilfred Owen was killed on the canal towpath in one of those WW1 battles. We win the canal against strong German opposition. One canal in exchange for Wilfred Owen was not worth it.
As we pack up a local lady is walking her dog and says we should have a camping permit. J tells her we are English and she gives up but takes a friendly interest. After rather indifferent coffee wake up at Avesnes, we have really great ride on twisty roads following the river Sermois upstream. Many people are kayaking down and this looks like it would be good when a bit more water running down. Lunch is dejeuner sur l'herbe by the river then more twisty roads. Finally we leave the river at Bouillion which deserves going back to see the impressive castle.
We head east and have a terrible time trying to find petrol near French/Belgium(?)/Luxembourg border. A blighted area ready for Betjeman's bomb and I swear never to go back there and I swear also. We blast down a near motorway and eventually arrive at Metz hot and bothered. The youth hostel (ha!) is fine though and at €20 each including parking is super fine.
Metz has some rather fine buildings in attractive honey coloured sandstone and a magnificently tall cathedral with what appear to be much needed flying buttresses. The question of who buttresses the flying buttresses comes to mind as they too appear to me on the move out wards. We don't do justice to Metz sights but do have beers in the main square and admire an old French motorcycle. A late supper in square close to the hostel and we retire at about 11:45 which is rather late seeing as we did not sleep well last night.
No comments:
Post a Comment