To the Woods, To the Woods

7th June 
I was now riding across the limestone plateau to the south of Soissons.  Erosion of the limestone has created steep valleys bounded by low cliffs in which there are grottoes or  'creuttes' as they are called in Picardy patois. Here is an example in the village of Maast-et-Violaine...

These creuttes or crouttes have undoubtedly been used by man (and Neanderthals!) since time immemorial.  In times gone by they probably provided troglodyte dwellings for poorer members of society, and during the Great War they came into service as shelters for munitions and fighters. Nowadays the creuttes have been renovated and used for storing firewood, laying down wine, and even as garages such as in the aptly named village Les Crouttes below!
 

 

After crossing the valley at Longpont where there are the ruins of an old Cistercian abbey, Zorbee and I plunged into the immense Foret de Retz, which is a relict of the ancient forests which used to cover France.  Protected and maintained over time for hunting purposes by French royalty, it is criss-crossed by wide rides, and virtually unchanged for the last three hundred years or so.  Following GR 11A along a remote ride...

 

Situated between Paris and the northern French border, the forest was also the site of heavy fighting during both World wars.  A forested ridge runs east to west with a thickly wooded slope facing to the north providing a natural defence position.

On 1st September 1914, the 4th Brigade comprised of the Grenadier, Coldstream and Irish Guards, were holding the ridge and covering the retreat of the 2nd brigade when they were attacked by advancing German forces. In the ensuing fierce and confused battle in dense woodland with limited visibility, the brigade managed to withdraw to behind Villers-Cotteret to the south, but not before over 300 officers and men were killed.

Among those killed was Second Lieutenant George Edward Cecil, the only son of Lord and Lady Cecil....

An emotive memorial was erected by Lady Cecil in memory of her 18 year old son, who died when two platoons of Grenadiers were surrounded and killed at La Ronde de la Reine.  The monument can be seen by the side of the D81 road from Villers-Cotteret  Such a tragic loss of young lives, none the less poignant for having happened almost a hundred years ago....

 

The ridge was also a natural look-out point.  In the Second World War French General 'The Butcher' Mangin erected a high wooden observatory tower on the crest to keep watch for the enemy and oversee the progress of his 10th army.

 This stele above marks the spot where the tower once stood, and the inscription reads  "Here was erected the High Observatory from which General Mangin directed the attack of 18th July which forced the victory".   Above the inscription is engraved a pictorial representation of the tower, but unfortunately the light was falling in the wrong direction for the photo.

This grassy ride sweeps all the way down to the chateau of Villers-Cotteret in the far distance..

 

Postscript:  In January 2015 the forest achieved notoriety as the focus of a manhunt for the terrorist brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who massacred a number of people in an attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Into Picardy

 6th June.
 Some places in the Champagne vineyards sport plastic bags warning that the vines have been sprayed by helicopter....

Slightly worrying is the brown area of grass affected by spraying which can clearly be seen in the photo. Perhaps it was just as well I did not have that bottle of champagne
 An interesting article about use of pesticides and herbicides in Champagne -http://www.wineterroirs.com/2013/06/champagne_conventional_farming_vineyards_spraying.html

I was constantly delighted by the endless grassy off road tracks through glorious French countryside - and NO gates to negotiate.  Along the GR142 to Courville..

 

 Coming down to St Thibault in Picardie..

 

 I manage to take a selfie in a road mirror....

Whte Vin Men and monsters

5th June.    The French countryside is splashed with the colour of wildflowers at this time of year.  These poppies and cornflowers were in the fields near Tours sur Marne..

We were now in deep into Champagne region, but it was only now that I began to ride through vineyards on the south-facing slopes of the Montagne de Reims to the north of the Marne...

 

 We meet our first monster of the day ....

  Zorbee is amazingly good with traffic, but even I thought this might be a vine sprayer too far for him.  But to give him credit, he hardly batted an eyelid.  This incredible machine has enormous wheels which track between two rows of vines, and insect-like spraying arms which can be lowered  between four rows.
All the champagne grape growers were out tending to their vines, a white van being the vehicle of choice - they can be seen dotted all over the countryside. White vin men in their white vans ....

 

 On the old roman way (part of GR141) through the Foret de la Montagne de Reims.... 

It took several hours to cross the forest via this sylvan way and the GRP de l'Adre which follows the Ardre valley.   The forest is part of the Montagne de Reims Regional Natural Park, designated a protected area in 1976.

Another monstrous sight met us at the entrance to the park in Pourcy  ..

 This incredible 'vegetable sculpture' was created by land artist Caroline Valetta. The four heads of the guardian 'chimera of the four winds' point to the four cardinal points.  Caroline grew and moulded the living sculpture from existing vegetation, which included willow, ash, chestnut, lilac, clematis and lianas,

 

Riding into Chaumuzy where we stopped overnight, I knocked on the door of the Salmon Champagne house to see if they would sell or donate a single bottle of champagne to celebrate my imminent crossing of Eurasia. The champagne houses deal in crates rather than single bottles and the woman who came to the door peered at the distinctly scruffy individual in front of her as if she was looking at some sort of insect. I never even got to try the line that I had ridden all the way from China to try their wonderful bubbly.  So no champagne in Champagne for me!

 

Along the Marne

4th June  and I set out along the GR14, crossing the Marne at Pogny.

 ..and following the Marne valley northwards through poppy sprinkled wheat and barley fields..

 The GR was well-marked here...

 --sometimes just as well!...

The white and red bands denote a long distance GR, and the single yellow band in the upper photo shows that the path is also part of a PR or Petit Randonnee - a marked path set up by a local community independent of the national network.
 At intervals one also comes across signposts like this one.....

Some useful info about Grand Randonnee in France, including detailed maps, can be found at
http://www.gr-infos.com/ 

In Challons-en-Champagne Zorbee attracts yet another tiny fan club...

 

Barges on the Rhine-Marne canal near Conde-sur-Marne.....

 

Following the Grand Randonnees

2nd June  Riding away from the canals I now started to tap increasingly into the network of Grand Randonnee or long distance public footpaths which cross France, and I found I was able to ride through some stunning unfenced countryside of field and forest. 
Cross near Loxeville.

 Vista back towards Ernville

 A dappled woodland path en route to Salmagne..

 This demoniac pair must be the scariest scarecrows I have seen in a long time.

No wonder their neighbour sees fit to arm himself gladiatorial style....

 

At Bar-le-Duc I met up again with the Rhine-Meuse canal and decided to follow it rather than the more cross country GR14 (Grand Randonnee 14) which is one of the major long distance footpaths crossing France.

 

..and Zorbee was fascinated by the fish which swam in it here.....

The horses spent the night in the garden of an abandoned lock keeper's cottage near Contrisson, and on June 3rd Zorbee and I continued along the canal, breaking away to cross the Saulx river near Bignicourt-sur-Saulx (another one bites the dust!) and follow a smaller GR.

Though by and large the GR are well marked and maintained, sometimes they present a challenge - I ploughed through this jungle near Bignicourt and eventually managed to get back on track again........ 

....though in fact this was a GRP or Grand Randonnee de Pays, more localised paths which are not always so well maintained.

   Later on I joined GR14 for several miles..

..coming down into the Marne valley at last and camping by the river at Pogny - the mosquitoes were so bad that we had to retreat onto a old railway siding away from vegetation, and cover the horses with rugs and masks.

 

 

We sleep in a Silage Pit

May 30th.  The Rhine-Marne canal swings north through Nancy at Varangeville but I decided to cut across to the south of Nancy along a network of small roads, canals and tracks using my recently bought maps.
From the moment we set foot in France I had sent Mike on a mission to scour the towns for local maps - it is not so easy to do this on horseback as many towns do not encourage horses, or may even ban them from civic areas, and there are always the problems of where to tie them and then coping with unsolicited droppings.    However I did manage to take advantage of a hole-in the-wall ATM while passing through St Nicholas-de-Port in the early morning..

 

 Following the short canal which links the Rhine-Marne canal in the Meurthe valley to the Canal de l'Est in the Moselle valley.  I have been unable to confirm its name, but seems to be variously described as Canal de Jonction, Canal de Fleville, or a branch of the Vosges canal or the Canal de l'Est - totally confusing, but very scenic all the same.  

 

We reach the Moselle river. Zorbee never misses an opportunity to grab a mouthful of verbage!

 

A very French sign...

 

After a long day we reached the afore-mentioned Toul and climbed over the hill to Bruley, where Welsh pony breeder Magalie Manet had offered to accommodate us for a couple of nights...

 We had a day off here and Magalie drove me up to see the small town of Bruley, which clings to a hillside clothed in vineyards.  A pilgrimage site at the centre of an established wine-growing area, the image of the twelfth century Chapelle Saint-Martin is apparently used as a logo by many vineyards in Lorraine.  Beside is the more recent neo-Gothic Chapelle du Rosaire and a grotto both of which are replicas of similar monuments at Lourdes.  The view out over farmland from the Chapel was stunning, but unfortunately I had forgotten to take my camera.
About to set off from Magalie's yard on June 1st...

Riding out through the vineyards of Bruley.

 Why do all the villages seem deserted?  The ghost town of Laneuville-derriere-Foug..

Another river to cross off the list - the Meuse at Ville-Issey..

 Les Trois Godelles or The Blue Cows of Commercy - looking as if they fallen into a vat of ink...

I passed this extraordinary piece of art by Patrick Hervelin on a roundabout just outside Commercy.  I had never heard the word 'godelle' before, but apparently it means 'cow' in Vosgien patois. No idea what the significance of the colour is, if any.

After another long day (over 40 kilometres) we ended up camped in a silage pit at Ferme Charoy in Erncourt, courtesy of dairy farmer Gerard and his nephew Benoit.

Canal days

May 28th .  We were now in a narrow valley in the hills, and I saw from the map that the canal appeared to swing sharply round at what was marked on the map as a 'Plan Incline'.  Not knowing what this was, I decided to take a short cut and we ended up negotiating an almost vertical wooded hillside shown to the right on the photo below; but while I climbed the flight of steps, Zorbee had to scramble up the slope beside me...

This sudden change in height of the canal should have alerted me that the Plan Incline was something out of the ordinary, but it was only later that I learnt to my chagrin what I had missed.  Traversing the Vosges mountains presented a huge challenge for the canal builders, and originally a long flight of seventeen locks were constructed to ascend the eastern slope. But in 1969 they were replaced by the Plan Incline St Louis-Arzwiller, a system in which a caisson or waterfilled container carrying the canal boats is lifted up or lowered down an incline using counterbalancing weights.  What I missed...

...I came out on the canal path somewhere near the top of the photo.Although I was gutted not to have made the short detour to see it, at least one can now refer to Youtube to see how it works and in action.

But the canal engineers' problems were not over, and near Arzviller we encountered this..

...a tunnel through the hill.  Much to his relief I am sure, Zorbee and I were forced to find an alternative route over the top.
The Holcim cement factory at Heming - its canal side location enables transport of the finished product by barge..

An idyllic evening for a pre-prandial at our overnight stop by the canal near Bataville ......

Early morning mist near Moussey the next day  ..

 

Most of the locks are automatically operated, and the post in the photo below contains a remote control receptor which responds to the telecommande remote control supplied to every boat travelling on the canal.  This warns the lock system that a boat is approaching, and an amber light flashes to indicate recognition. ..

 

My one concern while riding along the tow path was the fear that Zorbee might fall in by accident, for example if he spooked.  The sheer sides seemed to offer no exit points where a horse might easily scramble out.  I wondered what happened in the old days when barges were towed along the canal by horses or mules - did they really never fall in?   So I was quite glad to reach a section of the canal where the banks seemed quite degraded and vegetation reached right down to the water's edge. 

According to the sign below exhorting people not to mow, cut or trample vegetation, it is environmental policy along this rather beautiful stretch of the canal to encourage vegetation growth as a means of protecting and stabilising the banks.

 

Canal voyagers and fellow Brits Michael and Linda Nagle and friends Stephen and Susan Buckley who invited me aboard their launch Blue Dream at Einville-au-Jard for afternoon tea..

A gloomy camp spot by a coal tip at Varangeville...