The Beauty of the Meuse and the Peacefulness of the Ardennes (20 June to 12 July 2014)

Onward to Pont-a-Bar

We are on our own now and already missing David and Chris.  The boat seems quite empty without them. Not that they were noisy (compared to Topsy there is no competition!)  But they added a liveliness to the journey.

Locks are not easy today.  No problems with the traffic, it is just that the locks don’t open or close as they should and several times we have to call out VNF staff.  At the first lock we arrive on our own, but by the time it works there are five of us in the lock, predominantly Dutch or Belgian.  We do however see our first industrial since Givet.  But this stretch of water is primarily for leisure boats.

And it is beautiful.  The waterway is a little, but not much, narrower than lower down.  The scenery, with the Ardennes forests towering above us, is gorgeous.  The weather is also kind to us.

Revin is a pretty, one might almost say prissy, little port.  It is very well kept and has everything you want.  It has a beautiful park right next door but alas this is locked from the public.  Only available for weddings.  44 years too late.

Ascending the Meuse between Fumay and Revin

The Park at Revin

The moorings at Revin

Revin from the River

Next day we move just a short distance up river to the unspoilt village of Laifour.  The moorings are good but high, like Givet and Fumay.  But like Fumay with steeply inclined gangplanks we can get off.  The odd lock still gives us a nightmare (in terms of needing n agent to make it function) but we are steadily adjusting to that.

Meuse Locks: Beauty and Nightmare

Beautiful walks at Laifour

The moorings at Laifour

A beautiful village with the Sangliers of the Ardennes

We really enjoyed Laifour.  The village is charming, as are the locals, and there are great places to walk the dogs off lead.  They love it.

The next stage is moving out of the lower (French) Meuse towards Charleville-Mezieres.  But here it is still idyllic.  The forest about Deville looks like unspoilt nature.

The Ardennes Forest at Deville

The thriving town of Monthermé

New moorings at Monthermé

They have built a new port (moorings) at Monthermé, and several people have told us how good they are.  Our target though is Chateau-Regnault, just a little further on.  The setting here is a little less developed, but a good mooring, and plenty of places to walk freely with the girls.  As we arrive it all looks very colourful as there is some sort of fair on the opposite bank at Bogny-sur-Meuse.  Chateau-Regnault itself is famous for the Four Sons of Aymon, and has a great statue for them way above the village, but we did not climb up to find out what they were!

The Fun of the Fair at Bogny-sur-Meuse

Monument of Les Quartre Fils d’Aymon at Chateau-Regnault

Now we are close to Charleville-Mezieres, the “county” town of the Ardennes.  But it sounds very crowded and busy and we are not attracted, so we go straight through.  The deep lock at Mezieres is a bit scary.  It is says it is 3.4 metres, but there are another 4 metres plus of lock wall above the water line.  We get in easily enough, but being low in the water we cannot reach any of the climbing bollards to fix our ropes, nor can we reach the blue handle to operate the lock.  Stuck, we call the VNF. OK they say, and 20 minutes later they come to help us through.

Later we discover that only last year did VNF take a permanent lock-keeper off the Mezieres lock, and the guys who work for them generally think this was just lunacy.  We have to heartily agree with them.  With small boats (at least we are only low not small) this seems almost to be an accident waiting to happen.

And so we arrive at the peace and tranquillity of Lumes, a small town south but upstream of Charleville with a simple but excellent mooring alongside the football pitch.  Facilities are a good mile away, but everything is there.  And it is a good walk for the girls.

From there it is a short hop to Pont-a-Bar where eventually we will leave the boat for a month.  We fill up with diesel, and sort out our mooring with Benedicte and Cedric.  Grace à David and Chris we now have our car and can pop into Sedan for some shopping, and another of those blinking blood tests.  At least the results are all good.

We also take a day out too to visit Charleville-Mezieres by car, but didn’t stay long.  We needed to do it to get a skype signal to talk to Chriss and Dallas in Australia. That worked, except we couldn’t see the screen in the sun.  We did however also visit the church of Notre Dame d’Esperance which has some beautiful modern stained glass windows.

 

 

 

The stained glass windows at Notre Dame d’Esperance

And then from 27 June we had a last fortnight’s stroll up the Ardennes canal as far as Le Chesne, avoiding having to take the great flight of locks after that.  The first day took us through St Aignan, Omnicourt, and Malmy to La Cassine, when Glyn then cycled the 17 kms back to Pont-a-Bar via a different route through Sapogne and Hannogne, which was beautiful but somewhat hillier than he expected.

La Cassine was and is a beautiful spot, with great walks for the dogs.  We had some Dutch co-boaters when we arrived, but they left leaving it all to ourselves – and the rain that is.  But what is rain to boaters!

There are no shops in La Cassine and boaters do need bread.  This meant a trip into the neighbouring village of Vendresse, which had a beautiful Gothic church, and even in the rain, a grand hay bale rolling competition, which seemed great fun, if you like getting wet.

The Gothic Church at Vendresse

A Rolling Bale Competition at Vendresse – even in the rain

We also took a few days out to visit Rethel and Vouzier on the Aisne river the other side of the Ardennes canal summit, before it flows down to Berry-au-Bac and Bourg-et-Comin which we had traversed earlier in the year.

Impressive church at the village of Louvergny

A modern belfry at Rethel

The canalised Aisne at Rethel

Where European Flags also fly high

The Church at Vouzier

But we fell in love with La Cassine, just peace and beauty in the middle of nowhere.  The local lock-keeper also enjoyed his own Elysium.

Dusk at La Cassine

La Cassine also hosts a Son-et-Lumiere every year.  Sadly it was on this year in exactly the weeks when we were back in England.  Twice sad as they were staging Germinal which we would have loved to have seen.

Remains of the Chateau at La Cassine

Building the scenery for Germinal

From La Cassine we moved on to Le Chesne, a town with power and water provided free, which for all its charm were not at La Cassine.  Again we took advantage for some days out, including Laon which we had to miss in the fast trip earlier in the year from Rheims to Cambrai.  It was worth the visit, though we noted the similarities with Langres, and 9-7 we gave the contest to Langres. But Laon was well worth visiting, with an excellent lunch of Picardian Welsh rarebit (intriguing but good) where the girls could also sit with us.

The mounted knight symbol at Laon

View over the plain at Laon

The cathedral rose at Laon

And the Golden Gates

On the way back we called in at the Verlaine museum at Alincourt.  We were taken over by an entrancing concierge who rendered a half hour lecture on Verlaine in very fast French.  Linda was particularly bemused, but it was interesting.  She (the concierge) disagreed strongly however that Rimbaud used and abused Verlaine for his own purposes.  Each to his own view.

We returned to Pont-a-Bar with another few days at La Cassine.  Here for a couple of days we moored alongside Sylvie and Gilbert Schosman on La Caminaïre, who gave us some excellent tips on places to stop further up the Meuse.  Great companions whom we hope we’ll meet again. 

And then the routine of visiting the vets, cleaning up, and preparing the journey home.  Cedric was excellent in settling us into a good mooring to leave the boat for five weeks.  A very varied trip, this, but fascinating in every aspect.  As we left though we thought reflectively back on the time with Chris and David, and hoped strongly that Chris’s arm was repairing well.