Does Time Fly?

While the aerial capabilities of time are a matter of opinion, it seems to me that, like the water we've been on this summer, the perception of the passage of time is "fluid." When we were in Maasbracht in the spring waiting for work on the boat to be completed, it sometimes felt as though time was advancing only slowly. Once we started cruising in mid-June, our sense was that the passage of time speeded up and has continued to accelerate throughout the summer--because, unbelievably--here we are in Cergy, already at the end of our cruising for the year, and with only 5 weeks remaining until we return to Florida.

We passed through our last lock of the year yesterday at Pontoise

It's also already been a full week since I published the last blog posting. It seems like the "Publish" button was just pushed a couple of days ago, but we have been a little busy and without the kind of "down time" that I usually require for writing.

The furthest we traveled on any day since we left Compiegne on August 24 was 24 km (about 14 miles). We did that twice. On each of the other 3 cruising days we only traveled 13 km (about 8 miles). There aren't a lot of locks on the Oise, so the most locks we did in any one day was 2. It still continues to amaze us how many interesting things we can find by moving just a little bit. Another day, another town, another abbey, another castle, another museum all vying for attention. It becomes a matter of picking one or two things to do and ignoring the rest--as with everything else in life, it's not possible to do it all.

Wednesday, August 24: Our pick of the day was the Royal Abbey of Moncel, in the town of Pont-Sainte-Maxence. In 1306, King Philip the Fair (no narcissism there) transformed an old hunting lodge into a castle, and a few years later, founded l'Abbaye Royale du Moncel for the Clarisse order of nuns. Already in decline by the late 16th century, the abbey church was pulled down and destroyed during the French Revolution, its stones sold as building materials. The main abbey building survived to be variously occupied by a wine merchant, a seminary and boarding school, and, in World War II, by the Germans. 

The ruins of the castle (adjacent to the abbey). Only the towers
of the 13th/14th centuries remain intact

One exterior aspect of the refectory. Several rooms are open to explain the realities of monastic life "back in the day", some rooms are available for meetings and events, and other parts of the 
building are still undergoing restoration

Thursday, August 25: Our stop for the day was Creil, a relatively large town, with the remnants of a 13th century chateau (of course--in the Middle Ages chateaux seemed to be as thick on the ground as monasteries and abbeys.) The traffic was horrendous, so biking very far within the town was out of the question. What we did instead on this day was to cycle a few kilometers to the neighboring village of Verneuil-en-Halatte to visit the Serge Ramond Museum, previously known as the "Memoire des Murs et des Hommes" (memory of walls and men.) The museum is the only one in Europe dedicated to the testimony that graffiti has left through the centuries on the walls of churches, prisons, quarries, castles, and the like. For more than 40 years, Mr. Serge Ramond made moldings of graffiti--more than 3,500 in total. These records provide a fascinating historical perspective.

From the belfry in Amiens, graffiti of Australian
prisoners of war in WWI

A war scene from the 12th century, on a portion of the wall engravings
inside the church in Moings. The dress of the soldiers is like that found in the Bayeux
tapestries, thereby dating the drawings to the end of the 11th or beginning
of the 12th centuries. Historians think that the author of the drawings was
working when the church was built, perhaps as a young apprentice
stonemason in the 1120-1150 time period

That same day, a lovely couple from Germany, Helmut and Barbara, pulled their cruiser next to our boat and rafted up because they couldn't find a good mooring spot on the quay. They had quite a collection of Bavarian wines aboard--60 bottles!--and were anxious to have us taste a couple of them. We had a pleasant visit aboard their boat after dinner, and they were right, the wines were very good.

Friday, August 26: We decided to stay moored for one more day in Creil and visit the Domaine de Chantilly, about 12 kilometers away. The Domaine was built up from the Middle Ages by various owners. It is called the Castle of Princes, having housed the Conde dynasty. In the 16th century the first castle was transformed into a Renaissance-style chateau; The Great Stables--a veritable palace for horses--was added in the 1700's; and gardens of various styles were developed at different times. The current chateau is a re-construction of the Great Chateau, which had been destroyed during the Revolution. The rebuild was commissioned by the Duke of Aumale in the 19th century, the last of the Condes, to house his collections of paintings, manuscripts and furniture. He had no surviving heirs, so he bequeathed the Domaine to the Institut de France for the public good.

The Chateau of Chantilly: a confection in stone

The horse-racing track

The interior of the stables

The Great Stables, and a horse coming out for exercise

The library. The Duke had almost 19,000 works, including
 1500 manuscripts. The display cases contained many
original Bibles from the 1500's and 1600's

The castle entryway

A slightly different route returned us to Creil via the village of St-Leu-d'Esserent. We had originally planned to stop there with the boat, but weren't sure that the mooring would be adequate, so we opted for a "by land" visit instead.

The Saint-Leu claim to fame was its Benedictine Abbey. The abbey church was huge, on a
scale with some cathedrals. It miraculously escaped intense bombings in WWII that were being aimed at disused quarries in the region where the V1 bomb was being manufactured

Creil had a number of abandoned industrial sites in the area, but
it is making strides in urban renewal

Biggest duck I've ever seen

Saturday, August 27: This was supposed to be a day to get away from the churches, abbeys, castles, etc. and just have a quiet day along a nice quay in a small village. Unfortunately, our guidebook was, yet again, out-of-date, as the promised quay in Boran-sur-Oise proved to now be "private" and we had to move on. Eight kilometers further downstream we moored on commercial "dolphins" at the town of Beaumont-sur-Oise. For a 1000-year-old town it was pretty quiet, so we looked at a few of their old buildings, and then saw that it was Liberation Weekend. In August 1944, the city was liberated by the American army and the 2nd French armored division, and the event 78 years ago was being celebrated as part of the town's 1000th anniversary.

The poster advertising the event

There were displays of old jeeps and other vehicles, and people
dressed in American military garb

Lon talking with Fabrice, a French Air Force lieutenant who
was dressed as an American colonel. Nice guy

The skyline of Beaumont-sur-Oise and its church as seen from our mooring

Sunday, August 28: Last, but not least, we spent Sunday afternoon and evening in Auvers sur Oise. Auvers was the town where Vincent Van Gogh spent his final 70 days before committing suicide at the age of 37. He produced an unbelievable 78 pictures during that time. Boarding at the Auberge Ravoux, he died in his bedroom a day-and-a-half after shooting himself in the chest with a revolver one July afternoon on the edge of a wheat field behind the chateau.

Pictures he completed are displayed in the areas where he painted them

The medieval church of Auvers, and the magnet
I bought that bears the painting Van Gogh 
made of said church

The graves of Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo, in a
cemetery on the outskirts of Auvers. Theo died in Amsterdam only
a few months after Vincent's death, but it wasn't until 1914 that his
body was moved to Auvers

The workshop of Charles-Francois Daubigny,
also a painter and fervent supporter of Impressionism. Auvers
became one of the capitols of the art of that period

Our mooring on a quay next to a park was a nice place to watch the local folks enjoy a lovely Sunday afternoon. We had a few intrepid souls stop and talk to us. As we returned from our van Gogh walk, a music duo was setting up and sang English language acoustic pop-folk music for the next 2.5 hours. 

 "Sweet Blue" sang to an appreciative audience. Great music. I had hoped to
 buy a cd, but they had none on sale. Totally out of character for me, I invited them
 to the boat for a glass of wine when their set was done

 Sylvie and Peter on CARIB. She's a French
school teacher (of English), and he's British, but has lived 
in France for quite a few years

Our mooring in Auvers. Back to reality, on Monday morning,
Lon does spider web "search and destroy" duty before our
 final day of cruising for the season

We will spend the next few days doing "boat stuff", taking a day trip into Paris (Lon has been dreaming of French toast at "Breakfast in America" for a while now), and getting ready to exit France for about 10 days beginning September 5. It's a trip to the UK we were hoping to do last year but backed away from because of all the Covid travel uncertainties. We will spend a couple of days in Bath visiting with friends, and then we have 7 days in Cornwall and Devon, in the southwest of England. 

Details will, of course, follow.

Royal City

It's been a relaxing few days. The Canal lateral a l'Oise, as we left Pont l'Eveque on Saturday, alternated between green (tree-lined) and rural vistas. There was some commercial traffic, but not a lot, and no other pleasure craft traffic to speak of. Probably due to the commercial traffic that typically uses this waterway, there have been two chambers at each lock--one large enough to accommodate Freycinette-size barges (38 or 39 meters long) and one larger (usually over 100 meters long). We only had one lock to get through on Saturday and didn't have to wait at all. The mooring for the night was a quay in the town of Longueil-Annel. The town has a Barge Museum (which we didn't visit), but not much else; it was a rather quiet place.

Our mooring in Longueil. There was a road next to our mooring that was actually pretty busy during
the day. However, the "residents" on the other side of the canal were very quiet

August is vacation time in France. We've mentioned before how barging
can be a family affair. We've seen more than one instance of kids
being aboard commercial barges. Here a few kids turn their home
into a diving platform

The double locks in Longueil. The large lock is to the left and the
 chamber leading into the small lock is at center

Clever boat names are always appreciated. In this double barge, 
"Why Me" was attached to . . . "Why Not"

Our second day of cruising on Sunday, August 20, was very short--just under two hours. As we only traveled about 7 kilometers further downstream, it would have been even shorter had we not had to wait about 30 minutes at our one lock of the day for a commercial barge to make its passage through the lock. We reached the city of Compiegne and have been moored there ever since. There's a lot to see and do in the city and its environs, and although we're planning to leave tomorrow, we could easily stay longer and not run out of things to do. 

Compiegne has been a royal city for centuries, probably dating back to Charles V in the 1300's. He dealt with various political intrigues from the town, and he constructed a castle that, as a royal and court residence, was visited by many princes. The Hundred Years' War in the 1400's brought vast destruction to the city. During the Siege of Compiegne in 1430 Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English, which ultimately resulted in her being burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431.

The Joan of Arc Tower, the ruined dungeon of a 12th century castle,
 and perhaps where Joan of Arc was held after her capture until
being brought to Rouen

The icing on the royal cake was the decision by Louis XV to build a new castle worth attaching his name to. He loved Compiegne and the hunting that could be done in the surrounding forest. Work continued under Louis XVI. The result was the largest French neo-classical castle which, along with Versailles and Fontainebleau, was--and still is--one of the three most important French royal and imperial residences. During the French Revolution the building was essentially gutted of its furnishings and works of art. But in 1807, with Napoleon I in power, orders were given to restore the chateau to a habitable state--in this case, an imperial residence. It was at this time that the major planning was done, and work begun on the extensive, park-like formal gardens in the rear of the building. Napoleon III, who loved hunting as well, made the chateau his autumn residence.

A tiny portion of the formal gardens and the chateau in the
background

The back of the house . . .

. . . and the front of the house. The chateau currently houses several museums, including the 
historical apartments of Napoleon I, Napoleon III, and their empresses; and the National Car Museum.
It was a bit more than we had time for, so we limited our explorations to the exterior

This view, taken from the back steps of the chateau, shows the Alley of
Beaux-Monts, 4 kilometers long and about 60 meters wide, which connects
the forest to the chateau. Napoleon I started the project to reproduce for his
Austrian empress the perspective of Schonbrunn Palace near Vienna.
It was completed in the 1850's by Napoleon III

We thought it would be interesting to go to the small hill at the opposite end of the alley, so earlier today that's what we did. It was a pretty bike ride through the woods, ending with a short, but steep climb to get to the viewpoint on top of the hill.

Here we are at the top of the hill, with the chateau waaay in the distance

This is what the view toward Compiegne looked like.
Like the long stairway we encountered in the city of Liege,
it seems that it's a "thing" for idiots intrepid young
people to run up the hill

The forest of Compiegne has another claim to fame. Two days previously, not far from where we stood today on Beaux Monts, we visited the Glade of the Armistice. In November 1918, Marshall Foch of France, then supreme commander of the Allied forces in WWI, met with German representatives and signed the armistice in a rail car on the site, effectively marking the end of the First World War on November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m.

The area in the foreground marks the spot where Marshall Foch's rail
car stood; the car in which the armistice documents were signed. In the center
is an inscribed circular monument, and on the other side of that is 
where the German railway cars were parked

The museum had a replica of the original "armistice car"

All well and good, but as Paul Harvey used to say, "and now, for the rest of the story." The forest at Compiegne was, in fact, the site of a second armistice signing. In June 1940, as France was being overrun by the Germans and sought a cessation of hostilities, Adolph Hitler insisted that the armistice must be signed in the same spot in the Compiegne Forest and in the same railway car as the 1918 armistice. The railway car was removed from a museum building on the site and placed exactly where it had been in 1918, but this time, Hitler sat in the chair that Marshal Foch had sat in when he faced the defeated Germans in 1918. The Glade of the Armistice, which had been created as a memorial in 1927, was demolished by the Germans on Hitler's orders three days after the armistice was signed on June 22. The only thing left standing was the statue of Marshall Foch. The railway carriage was taken to Berlin as a trophy of war and was later burned, although there are varying accounts of just when and by whom it was destroyed. After the war, the site and memorials were restored by German POW labor.

A photograph showing the rail car being removed from the museum
by German soldiers in preparation for the armistice signing in 1940

I saw this on our bike ride out to the armistice site. Kitty was
very comfortable. Apparently, I must need a "cat fix" badly

Although Compiegne suffered some damage from bombs during WWII, the damage was not as extensive as in other towns we've been in this year. There were enough older buildings to make it a nice city to walk through.

The 16th century town hall (Hotel de Ville)

Parc de Songeons, with arcades from the former convent of the
Jacobins

Part of what remains of ramparts that protected Compiegne
in the 12th to 17th centuries

A 15th century house

The ultimate in good taste in wine storage--
or maybe not

Not all is ancient in the town. This modern hotel had a rather unusual exterior. Lon and
I had dinner on Monday night at the restaurant on its lovely outdoor terrace
 (denoted by the splashes of colors)

Our final stop of the day today was at Royallieu Camp, which now houses the Memorial to Internment and Deportation. Built during the First World War as a military base, and later used as a hospital, Royallieu was turned into an internment camp from 1941-1944. It was used as a collection point for political prisoners, resistance fighters, and Jews. Some of the prisoners were used as "hostages", with several shot to death as retribution every time a German was killed, but most were held relatively briefly before being deported to concentration camps in the East.

Three of the original barracks buildings still exist, and are used for
museum exhibits

The monument to the tens of thousands of victims

The stop in Compiegne has been productive in ways other than just sightseeing. There's a large boating supply store just across the river from where we're moored, and we were able to obtain some parts that we've been needing for a while. With those parts, Lon was able to complete some maintenance that had been deferred. So, we're now rested and ready to put a few more kilometers behind us. Nineties are in the forecast for the next couple of days, but at least the bridges are higher now that we're on the Oise River, so we can leave the bimini up and stay in the shade while underway. 

On the Cusp of the New

New waterway for us, that is. We arrived yesterday in Pont l'Eveque, which is where we made our turn up the Canal du Nord about 2 weeks ago on our way to the Somme. We're spending the day here, but when we start cruising tomorrow, we will be heading south on a stretch of the Canal lateral a l'Oise that will be new to us. After 14 kilometers we will pass into the Oise River, and 94 kilometers later we will arrive in the Port de Cergy, where C.A.R.I.B. III will spend the winter.  In theory, according to the route calculations of our navigation software, we could be in Cergy with only 3 cruising days of very moderate length (4-5 hours). But why rush? It seems as though we haven't had a lot of opportunity this summer to take the truly relaxed pace we had been hoping for before our cruising season began. So, with the vnf assuring us that water depth will not be an issue for us as we cruise south, and the fact that our contract with the port doesn't start until September 1, we are really going to try to live up to our name during these next ten-to-twelve days: Chill and Relax It's Bargetime. Our intent is to cruise in short segments and take days off as warranted, so that we can take advantage of being in an area that seems to be chock full of interesting things.

We left Cappy (on the Somme) last Monday, August 15, which was a national holiday in France, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. It's interesting that in a country in which secularism in public life (but freedom of worship in private life) was codified into law in 1905, roughly half of the public holidays represent feast days in the Catholic church. Why? It seems it would not be politically expedient to take away long-standing popular holidays. 

When we left the Port of Cappy on Monday morning, the park had been
taken over by a village "brocante"--flea market

It had rained a bit on Sunday night, so the air was nice and fresh on Monday morning. It was a pleasant, uneventful cruise to our exit from the Somme and our stop in Peronne.

New Zealand friends John and Margaret left Cappy just ahead of us and preceded us into this lock on the Somme. When the Somme met the Canal du Nord, they turned left to the north (their winter
mooring is in the Netherlands) and we turned right to head south

Cappy was a haven for kayakers

Despite the canal being bordered by trees in many spots, there were
open areas that served to remind us that we were in a very agricultural
part of France

We'd stopped in Peronne for one night on our way to the Somme, but weren't there long enough to do much other than shop for groceries and make an aborted attempt to get water. Now, with water tank nearly full, we decided that it was a great idea to spend two nights in Peronne so that we could have time to see what the town was all about. Its position on the Somme River made it a historically important crossroads, but its location also caused it great suffering through the years. They must be a resilient people to keep rebuilding after devastation by the Germans (1870) during the Franco-Prussian war, nearly total destruction during WWI, and bombing by the German air force in May 1940. One of the reasons for us to visit Peronne was to see one of the major French museums focusing on WWI, the Historial de la Grande Guerre.

The WWI museum is housed in the restored castle of Peronne. The
four towers were built at the end of the 12th century. The castle was
much more complete prior to WWI

This photograph behind this memorial display in the museum shows
the extent of damage sustained by the castle in WWI

Lon in one of the display rooms in the museum. The information was
certainly comprehensive, but in the end, felt to us a bit "dry" and
too much to absorb in one visit

For as much damage as the town sustained during the last 150 years, there was still enough "history" to keep us interested. How much was original and how much was restoration was a little difficult to judge, although based upon some of the photos we saw, they've done a masterful job of restoration.

The Saint-Jean-Baptiste church. It was originally built in 
the early 16th century. It has the moniker of "the martyr edifice"
because of how much damage it sustained in 1870, 1914-1918, 
and 1940-45

Peronne's war memorial, "Picardy cursing the
war", represents a woman on her knees weeping over
the body of a dead soldier, shaking her fist in anger

The Grand Place and the Hotel de Ville (town hall) in the center. The town hall is another "martyr edifice", due to how many times it's been damaged and reconstructed over the years

One of our favorite bits was the remnants of the ramparts. Peronne was a completely fortified border city, and its ramparts date from the early 17th century. They were damaged during WWI and later restored.

The "Porte de Bretagne" (gate to Britain) 

Lon in the park that was created at the exterior of the ramparts

We love moats! 

We left Peronne on Wednesday morning, August 17, uncertain what we were going to encounter with the "boat grouping" that was in place on the waterway. As it turned out, we encountered no other pleasure boat traffic traveling with or close to us, so boat grouping became a non-issue. There wasn't a lot of commercial boat traffic either, but whether that is the usual state of affairs or because it is August--traditional vacation season in France--we're not sure. All we know is that our timing was awesome in that we got through seven locks and one tunnel with little to no waiting during the two days it took for us to cruise from Peronne to Pont l'Eveque.

North entrance to the Tunnel de Paneterrie, just over 1 kilometer long

Lest we forget, the canals are still a source of income to many commercial
bargees. Here, loading grain is a family affair

We overnighted (again) on a quay called Port d'Ercheu. This
time we thought we'd investigate the village that gave the quay its
name. Very quiet, rebuilt after WWI. Like many French villages
these days, it's mostly a bedroom community without much in the
way of local services like bakeries or other stores

Another sign that many commercial barges are a family affair. This was 
a playground placed atop the barge; a young boy was at the controls
(under the direction of an adult) when the barge left the lock

This was our "entertainment" when moored along the Ercheu quay--
the potato harvest was in full swing. They were working until late in the
evening, and when we awoke at 4 a.m. they were working by
lights in the field

We arrived in Pont l'Eveque around lunchtime on Thursday, August 18. After a bit of "down time" to relax after the cruising exertions of the morning, we set off on our bicycles to a small community just downstream. It turns out that the little town of Chiry-Ourscamp has two buildings of some importance: the chateau of Mennechet and the Notre-Dame Abbey Ourscamp. 

The Chateau Mennechet was designed in the late 19th century to be an art gallery. It wasn't finished before the owner died in 1903 and never served its intended purpose. It suffered damage in WWI and WWII and was never restored. It was abandoned for a long time and almost demolished, but is now registered as a historic monument. We saw no evidence of active restoration, but the grounds were mowed and there weren't big piles of rubble, so perhaps there is hope.

Lon outside the locked gate to the Chateau Mennechet

More accessible was our next stop, the Notre-Dame Abbey Ourscamp. Founded in the 10th century, the abbey was, in the 13th century, home to about 400 monks. The complex is mostly in ruins these days, the victim of the wars which ravaged the rest of the region. Many of the church ruins are from buildings constructed in the 12th and 13th centuries; other remaining buildings are from the 17th and 18th centuries. It never ceases to amaze me how many abbeys and monasteries were created in the Middle Ages--and the resources that were required to build and maintain those gigantic edifices.

The gate to the abbey courtyard and the moat, both dating to 
a late 1700's reconstruction

The choir and what were monk's quarters (to the left) are the most intact portions of what was
the abbey church. It was a huge building

The Monastic Hospital, built about 1240 and originally the communal
hospital. It was changed into a chapel at the beginning of the 19th 
century. The inside has been completely restored; the outside still
bears evidence of the bombardments of the world wars

Of the two wings of the 18th century pavilion, only the left wing is habitable. Previously the
lodge of the abbot, it now houses the resident religious community. The right wing was
seriously damaged in WWI and is currently undergoing restoration

After our interesting outing we made the mistake of following the Google Maps route to get back to the boat. Things started fine, and then we were on a grass path. You'd think we would know better by now.