France 2014

After the hard drive the day before niether of us felt like going very far. We briefly contemplated going to Arras to visit the Wellington Tunnels, but it was 40-60 mins away and the opening times followed the ‘closed for at least 2 hours’ culture of France.  So, I decided that we’d visit cemeteries, be no more than about 20 mins from the B&B all day, and maybe do some caching too (the latter did not happen).
I had two cemeteries I wanted to visit to find University of Manchester casualites of 1914 and with a quick look at the CWGC website and our France road atlas concluded that we’d just go fairly radomly around cemeteries and maybe I’d pick up some other UoM men from 1915-1918.  In the morning we visited: Le Touret; Post Office Rifles, Festubert; Buevry Communal Cemetery Extension; Woburn Abbey Cemetery; Guards Cemetery, Windy Corner, Cuinchy

Getting hungry we headed for Fromelles where our B&B host had told us there was a good little museum.  Saw some large bunkers on the way, but didn’t have time to stop and explore.  We ate our lunch, which we’d picked up from a pattiserie earlier in the morning, on the benches outside the museum.  The museum is small, but well done and provides context for the new Phesant Wood Cemetery from the viewpoint of both 1916 and the recent work to estabish it.
 
In the afternoon we covered: The Austrilian Memorial Park, Fromelles; Laventie Military Cemetery; Pont Du Hem Cemetery
 
I’d realised just before we left the UK that we’d be staying close to the location of a successful attack made by 31st Division (alongside 5th Division), 28th June 1918 known as the Battle of Forest De Nieppe.  I’d written about it in my masters dissertation and I was naturally keen to see the area so late afternoon we moved to Vieux Berquin and vistied Nieppe de Bois cemetery and Aval Wood Cemetery.  I rarely fail to have a relevant trench map when on a battlefield and this was no exception as I had one I used in my dissertation.  It showed the second cemetery to be very close to the jump off point of one of the brigades and faced the direction of the attack. As we drove back to the B&B I was able to track the farms and we passed brigade HQ.  I found a lot of East Yorks and several other men who died on 28th/29th June 1918 in these cemeteries.
All in all a relaxed day and whilst I enjoy organised battlefield tours it was nice to not be working to a fixed timetable for a change. Mike doesn’t have the same level of interest as me, but he was very patient while I pottered and he helped locate some of the men in the bigger cemeteries. I really appreciated him acting as my battlefield taxi/chauffeur for the day.
Finally, the B&B we were staying in was La Peylouse Manor at Saint-Venant. One of the owners, Didier, explained to me it’s Great War history.  It was the HQ for the Portuguese and Indian Armies, then a trench mortar school. In the breakfast room is a picture of Haig on the front steps.  In 1918 Siegfried Sassoon’s unit was nearby and helped protect the house and gardens.  He wrote three poems while here and the gardens have an exhibition about him.

Another day of driving but we made it back in one piece and at a reasonable time, about 18.00. The M1/M6 route wasn’t too bad and the quality of the driving was rather high for a change. Unfortunately the long, long section of variable speed limit and SPECS were quite draining. Around the M26/25 there was a considerable section of 60 limit with signs talking about congestion on one the least densely packed motorway of our journey. No roadworks, no problems, no hold ups. Some might say ‘well, it worked’ but it looked completely unnecessary.
Stopped off at Manor Farm in Catthorpe again. This time it was to pick up some dinner (and some nice supplies). A couple of pies, bacon, burgers, cake and beer.  All local, homemade etc. Had a lovely chat with the girl on the checkout so it appears that even some of our local 16 year olds are lovely, intelligent and articulate.
This adds to our haul of goodies. On the way to Calais we stopped off at an Auchan supermarket and Pen picked up some nine bottles of red wine. Most were less than 4€ and a couple were only 1€80. So we’ll have to see what the quality is like 🙂
So this concluded France 2014. Hope you’ve enjoyed it.
We might be putting up a summary of our conclusions, for future reference.

Tomorrow we travel back home to hamsters and housework. Today we visit cemeteries. As explained earlier this was always part of the itinerary. Pen will post soon to explain what, where, why though.

After the cemeteries we decided to go out for a meal to a local TWO star Michelin place. Well, rather the chef, Mark Meurlin has two stars and the place we were going was the cheapest and simplest of the three restaurants on his site. However, when we turned up we were subsequently turned away with a “We’re fully booked”. This might have been true (Friday night and the place is popular) but the room was empty and we were under dressed. However, the recommendation came from an American couple we chatted to at length over breakfast. They’d been there last night and had been impressed. They’d worried about a dress code but other diners were in jeans too so they were ok.
Anyway, tired and hungry we tried a local town and eventually settled on a grill place that did steaks and pizza. Fearing a repeat of the previous such place we were nervous but it turned out ok. Except for a brief power cut.
One oddity of the evening was that the sat nav went a little nuts at one point. It couldn’t seem to locate our position or orientation and changed the location of our destination. In the end we had to turn it off. It seemed to cure itself after rebooting after dinner though. Hopefully it’ll work for long enough to return us home. We did bring the TomTom as a backup though.

This morning we had a tough decision to make: should we use the planned route across country using ‘small’ roads or use motorways instead? The motorway route was about 1.5-2h shorter and took us via Luxembourg and Belgium. The non-motorway route is obviously slower but more picturesque and goes via one of the cemeteries Pen’s interested in.
Eventually, considering that 8.5h is a long time to travel, we opted for the motorway route at a mere 6.5 hours.
It started well; the French motorways are rather quiet and fairly relaxed but it was busy around Nancy, which was far from fun. One of the bad habits of European drivers seems to be that they’ll sit only a few metres of your rear. Whilst the BMW is fast and can out accelerate pretty much anything we saw it doesn’t help when there are speed cameras dotted around motorways. The French mostly keep to the limits so it’s easy enough to pass without going too fast and easy enough to keep people off your rear.
However, once we reached Belgium the story changed. The Belgians are bad drivers. We’d seen this in France too where we’d come across several of the red-plated freaks. They have the bad habits of the French and British. Their speeds are all over the place, they drive too close, they weave through traffic, they go for gaps which don’t exist. No lane discipline, no patience, no clue. And again speed cameras on motorways which the locals will know but the foreigners don’t. Add into the mix numerous sets of road works and heavy traffic and after an hour or two it was too much for both of us. We came off at Mons, which was actually very close to a cemetery so stopped there for a rest and for Pen to find one of her soldiers.

Afterwards we decided to try the non-motorway route for the remaining 128km. This put the remaining time at 2.5h (2h for the motorway route) so decided it was worth it. The sat nav took us back through Mons and straight into a mile long traffic jam. We stuck this out for a while, through Tournai but then decided to take the motorway around Lille, which from previous experience is a nightmare. Within seconds of setting the sat nav it had us turn into a highway, four lanes wide of stationary traffic. Again we had to plough through this until we got through. Then it took us off to avoid more motorway congestion only to find that a) the congestion reported on the Real Time Traffic disappeared almost instantly and b) we were back on our non-motorway route.
The final insult came when we turned off the motorways entirely for the last 20km or so… spent behind a tanker behind a tractor. Painfully slow. Overall the journey lasted longer than the predicted back-roads route we’d originally planned. And with a lot of stress and hassle.
The impressive thing is that until Mons we’d been clocking up 35mpg+ and an average of 67mph. Ultimately we finished up with about 34mpg and about 50mph.
We arrived at the B&B fairly late and there was no one to be found so we wandered around the house and the, extensive, gardens but without luck. After about 15 mins our hostess appeared from nowhere claiming to have been in the garden. She is a lovely but eccentric lady with a giant cat, a Maine Coon. Hers is a mere kitten weighing in at 5kg and could easily exceed 7kg as an adult. Pedigree too. And it was the soppiest animal we’d ever seen. She played with him like a doll, or a baby chimpanzee and he loved it. Most cats would have started ripping strips off after just one second of that attention.
She advised us to try a restaurant about 20 mins away in Hazebrouck but we finished up at the one next door. The waitress was working very hard – she didn’t stop moving for a second even though she only had two sets of customers. The food was fairly decent for a Brasserie-type of place.

Well, if you saw the short post yesterday you might be wondering WTF?!
We wanted to do something more substantial than the previous day so made some proper plans. In the morning we’d visit the Fort in Belfort which was rather big and had been restored and preserved for visitors. It was quite interesting and we were provided with an audio tour in English. Initially the device had have a number entered as you approached an area but once indoors a special system took over and it gave you the appropriate information for the current area automatically.

After this we set off to our next destination but stopped when we found an open Patisserie at lunch time! Pen was disproportionately happy about this and actually cheered. 🙂
We stopped in the car park of a fancy church but only to eat lunch as a picnic nearby. Mike had a rant about architects who can build pretty stuff but don’t give a moment’s thought for the poor people who have to maintain the thing for the next fifty years.
This was a stepping stone for our intended destination – the Mining Musee with the deepest shaft etc. etc. (don’t bother, all the jokes have been done). There wasn’t much information available but the thought of being able to go into an old mine was quite exciting. Unfortunately that was all it was: a thought. It was just a relatively small building with lots of static exhibits and a rather irritable lady on the desk who didn’t have any change. It was a bit of a disappointment and we finished up with rather a lot of time spare.

To use up the rest of the afternoon we decided to go for a fun drive in some of the surrounding mountains. It was obvious from the map there that were some really twisty roads which needed driving. However, on the way we wanted to find another of the local forts. The history is long but the one at Belfort is just one of many in the area but we weren’t sure if any of the others were open to the public. Anyway, we followed the directions of the sat nav which lead us up a rather rough road to a small car park. Fortunately the tyres survived the punishing kilometre. The car park was occupied by a bunch of kids on mountain bikes being taught to ride off road by a teacher. All looked rather surprised to see a car arrive. We checked and they didn’t mind so we wandered off up the hill to the fort.

There we found a bunch of French squaddies out for training with full armaments – assault riffles, LMG etc. Near by we could hear the pop of 5.56mm and the boom of a 7.62 machine gun then a few minutes later another bunch ran up with a tripod mounted Browning and set it up pointing down the hill we’d just walked up. So we just stood next to the fort (which appeared to be their temporary base) and watched all this. The fort was being used a temporary base for the troops and was open but we’d probably have been shot, in French, if we’d tried to enter.
Since there was no way we were going to voluntarily stand down range of a bunch of heavily armed (it looked like they were using training weapons with blanks but, well…) new recruits we just waited. No one seemed to mind. Eventually once they ran off, seemingly to collect something they’d lost… ammo perhaps… we made our way back to the car. At this point the school kids were cycling up the hill. Hopefully some survived the day.
Then after this excitement a fun drive up and down, then up and down a hill/mountain at some speed and vigour. Most enjoyable until it started raining. Then the traction control was turned off and the limits of traction at low speed were explored with interesting results – we need a limited slip diff. Uh hu.
This evening was to herald another attempt at a Michelin starred meal. We’d tried to arrange it at a couple of the other places but they were closed or we just couldn’t arrange something in time.
It’s pretty hard to describe the experience, and an unforgettable one it was. We thought we’d opt for the basic menu as that was mostly likely to end well as Mike doesn’t eat cheese. There was a tasting menu (degustation) on offer at half price (where half of a lot is still a lot) but the risk of lots of cheese was high so our host had so informed the restaurant.
Anyway on arrival it seemed that none of the staff spoke any English (not as uncommon as you might think) so we spoke to the only person who did – the chef, Christian. He was lovely and helpful and understanding. He was amused, in a good way, that Mike didn’t eat cheese… nor drink wine and explained that the tasting menu had no cheese. We took the plunge and didn’t regret it. I would love to tell you what we ate but we have very little clue. The waitresses explained each course… in French. We picked out the odd word and recognised some of the things of the place. There were some small tomatoes on one place and some fish (or other marine life on another) but that’s about it.
Ten courses later (nine really as we excluded the cheese course) we’d eaten green, red, yellow orange, pink and brown (if there’d been something blue we could have played food snooker). Hard, soft, liquid, solid, salty, bitter, sweet, hot, cold, meat, veg, fruit. Everything really. Even stuff like looked like mint mousse with cream but turned out to be something made of potato (pomme de terre).
The whole thing took four hours and we didn’t get back until midnight, thus the short post yesterday. The courses kept coming and we only knew when to stop when another couple got up and paid their bill. In fact, yet another couple across from us were used as our guides. Mike watched them to see how they ate the food and with which implement (we didn’t even recognise some of the cutlery) and then we copied. It was a fairly surreal experience. We wanted to photograph the food as it almost art but felt it would be rather unfrench. However, we subsequently saw one of the French couples doing just that.
After the meal we were able to thank the chef in person – he’d taken the time to substitute ice cream for mascapone on one of the courses for Mike, which was much appreciated. A long, wonderful, memorable experience.

Sorry. Just a quick “we’re not dead.” post. We’re currently at a posh restaurant and they are taking their time with the eight courses.
Adventures to look forward to:
Forts
Lunch
Mines
Soldiers
Roads
And a star.

We weren’t quite sure what to do today. There are plenty of suggestions in the form of leaflets and ideas from our hosts but nothing leaps out. Some are just too far away to really contemplate, some just don’t sound interesting (a museum of eye glasses!) and some are indoors (good weather forecast today, bad tomorrow). Many of the interesting ones are only open at weekends, or on Thursday or the last but one Saturday brunch before the vernal equinox as predicted in the book of Revelations: “Thou shalt not visit the Ironworks Museum until Hell hath freezed over.”. It can be a little frustrating.
We were a little late leaving as we talked at length over breakfast to the other couple staying, a German/Polish pair who were on their way to Provence. They’d come straight from Hamburg the day before (12h) and had another 6-7h to do today. Arnie and Dominique were quite lovely and we could have talked for hours but they had a deadline to keep and we had to get on with our day. Breakfast itself was ok but the homemade bread was a bit heavy and there was copious debate about whether the salty caramel spread was still in date as it smelt a little cheesy. Make of that what you will.
So we headed to an old fort which, as expected was closed but we had a quick look around the outside:

Our host had recommended a village called ‘Saint Hippolyte’ so we dropped by. There wasn’t much to it really. Mildly pretty village. Shops all shut at lunch time. Anyway, we hung around until the Patisserie opened, had lunch and went off for a drive.
We’re fairly close to the Jura mountains so managed to find a few rather twisty, empty roads and gave the car a good run in third gear, which was quite entertaining. On the way we crossed the French-Swiss border four times.

Not that anyone noticed. We could have been smuggling anything. By the way, if you have any use for a case load of assault rifles then just let us know.
This evening we tried a local semi-posh restaurant and it was… ok. Out of context the food would have been decent enough but nothing special. Chez Grand Ma is still the best.
We’re trying to book into a Michelin starred place for tomorrow night. We have high hopes.
 

Final view around the chateau (panorama):

We had to cover about 550km (340m) from the Chateau east to almost the Swiss border. There were two choices of routes, one which used toll roads all the way and would likely be boring and expensive. They actually add an extra 100km onto the journey but would only take 6.5 hours to drive. The other was across country and pretty much the shortest possible route but with a mixture of (the equivalent of) A and B roads, with a tiny amount of motorway.
Obviously we chose the latter and here’s the ‘proof’:

We had a couple of rest stops but mostly it was just 9h of doing 90kmh (well, maybe a bit more than that). There wasn’t much of note except that the roads were got gradually busier as we crossed over. This meant that some of the fun, twisty bits of road were spoiled by lorries and slow cars. This was somewhat disappointing.
We managed to have a bit of fun on some of the stretches though. And I can’t stress enough just how capable the BMW is at overtaking. It really doesn’t handle as well as the RX8, has more body roll and is less stable but it can really, really perform. In the UK there are some uphill stretches which offer a second overtaking lane but in France these are very common. They’re often quite short and the end can come as a bit of a surprise but they’re quite useful. 450nm of torque at 2k RPM means we can just pull out and be half way up the hill before the Citroens and Renaults have time to do anything.
Most of the time there was enough power in 6th to pull around anything pretty quickly but when needed 3rd gear can mean pulling out, passing and pulling in in about 4s. This was rarely need though because many roads are like this:

 
One of which we did 36km on in a straight line. We overtook a lot of cars and lorries today. The French mostly don’t seem to mind though.
A note to the unwary: we’ve stopped at petrol stations where our credit cards weren’t accepted. Some petrol stations are unattended and only take cards. These are Esso and Total, so not small outfits. On the third attempt we were starting to worry as we knew our cards worked and we were getting low on fuel. A nice French biker tried to help but didn’t understand the problem. However, the guy who ran the shop with the pump (manned petrol stations tend to be part of another business like car rental or a repair garage, not a franchise with sandwiches and barbecues) came to help us. He had no English but was able to explain that foreign cards didn’t work (in France) and it seemed that we’d locked out his pumps. He had to reset them and then we had to fill and use the card machine in the shop. He was patient and helpful and now we know the problem we can hopefully work around it.
Lunch was at the side of the road on a disused piece of tarmac. Not a bad view though:

We had a quick stop in Beaune as it had a rather lovely Hospice, as recommended by Lindsay, but we struggled to navigate the centre of Beaune due to poor signage and a very slow data rate on the iPhone. Eventually we found it but didn’t have time to go in so will have to come back another day.

Eventually we made it to the B&B. The room is small but nicely equipped (with wired networking, not wireless – I can hear Daz saying ‘As it should be’) and a good bathroom but we both agree that it’s not a 14th Century Chateau. A quick meal at a local Brasserie and it’s time for bed.

We were about to leave for L’image and decided to check the booking with Stephen. It transpires that the owners were at today’s open day and that the restaurant is shut on Sundays. It was fortunate that we checked with him before setting off. The backup plan was always Chez Grand Ma and we had another good meal there so all was not lost.
France seems to close on Sunday. And lunchtimes. And Monday evenings. And August. And January. We emailed ahead to ask the next place for an evening meal tomorrow but they’re only doing cold snacks. So we asked for restaurant recommendations, only to be told that most places in the area are shut. The local Michelin starred place is shut at the end of September, and January.
The French do some really good food but it’s quite hard to actually buy it.
Things forgotten to recount:

1. Jedd and Michele had been here for over a week before their luggage turned up. Air France had lost it and Stephen had been calling them three times a day to recover it. At one point it was assumed that it would never arrive. It seems that although the French do nationalisation quite well, Air France is an exception and appears to be rather poor in every way.
2. The Auchan chain of supermarkets appears to be the best place to buy cheap, good quality wine.
3. Thanks to Robert for including us in their celebrations when Scotland voted to keep being subsidised by the rest of the UK. A bottle of Bolinger appeared and Pen was treated to some good Champagne.

 

It appears that the one constant in our holidays is a Zoo. We talked through places to go today with our host, Stéphane/Stephen, and it seems that vineyard tours are generally just a small room with some wine to taste. This might be fine for some but given that Mike doesn’t drink we wanted something more… educational. Neither of us felt like spending the day wandering Chateaus so we went to the local Zoo. It’s the biggest in Europe, or something like that, and is as much Safari Park as Zoo. All the animals are outside and have lots of space to do whatever animals do.
We were fortunate to be hanging around the Coati enclosure when they were due to be fed and got a personal explanation, in English, from the keeper. The photos give a good idea of what we saw today. However, it doesn’t show the Ostriches mating, which two did right in front of us. It turns out that ‘Ostrich style’ involves flapping your arms and beating your head on your back repeatedly and the girl just lies there and eats grass.
After all this excitement we went to another of these ‘pretty villages’  Angle sur L’anglin, with the intention of stopping to have a look around. It was packed! While the rest of France is empty this place was full. We narrowly avoided pedestrians and vehicles while wondering whether to stay or go. In the end we went. From what we could see it is a lovely place but would want to see it without the crowds.
So, back to the Chateau earlier than expected. We picked up some pastries from the Chateau bakers – the baker himself is retired and only does this for such events but the food is gorgeous. Best pastries we’ve had in France. We’ll be taking some with us on tomorrow’s trek across France.
We’re looking at a 8+ hour journey. 🙁
Tonight we’re booked in at the Hotel de L’image, where Stephen’s clan have been at least once since they arrived. We’re hoping for good things but haven’t seen the menu yet.