On Friday, July 29, we left the Sambre a l'Oise Canal and entered into the southern section of the Canal de Saint-Quentin. In doing so, we left behind some of the anxieties we had been feeling about the depth of the water and the possibility of a canal closure. It's not that the part of France we have entered has been getting any more water, but the Saint-Quentin and the Canal du Nord (which we will be taking to get to the Somme River) have a fair amount of commercial barge traffic. As commercial waterways, they are going to benefit more than waterways with mostly leisure traffic when decisions have to be made about maintaining water depths via the allocation of a scarce resource--water. For at least a few days we will enjoy the deeper waters, but all bets are off when we get to the Somme. It used to be an alternative commercial route for getting to Paris, but these days it's primarily used by leisure craft. It's not managed by the vnf, so we don't get advisories as to navigation issues there. We'll soon know.
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| Must have been a frustrated user of the quay on which this water/electricity bourne resided. |
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| Our first lock on the short section of the Canal de Saint-Quentin. We cruised on the SQ until it ended at the town of Chauny and the Canal Lateral a l'Oise began. The locks became slightly wider here. |
Chauny is a town of about 12,000 people, and is big enough to have a train station and a movie theater (French language only, unfortunately). Although the site has been settled for many hundreds of years, there isn't much in Chauny that is over 100 years old, thanks to being close to the front lines in WWI and suffering nearly complete destruction during the process of its recapture by Allied forces in 1917. The community was rebuilt after that war and these days has a nice "feel" to it.
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| Lon crosses the town square in front of the "new" Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) |
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| Notre-Dame of Chauny church. The traffic circles in the town, like the one by this church, were beautifully planted with flowers and figurines, in this case, apes. |
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| Probably some of the oldest artifacts left in Chauny, tomb markers from the 1600's embedded in the walls of Notre-Dame church. |
Being in the part of France that it is, it's not surprising that Chauny had a military cemetery. Some French military graves were contained within the main civic cemetery, but an adjunct to the cemetery contained separate sections for British, French, and German war dead. Most graves were those of soldiers from the First World War, but there were a few from WWII.
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| French war dead in the main cemetery. There are just under 500 French military graves. |
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| Around 450 British soldiers, many unidentified |
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| 1500+ German soldiers. Each headstone bears the name of (usually) 4 men. There was one mass grave with 187 dead, 171 of them never identified |
We had a New Zealand-American reunion of sorts in Chauny. John and Margaret and Tony and Sue were in the port with their boats, and dinner Friday evening was a fun affair at a nearby Italian restaurant.
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| L to R: Tony, Margaret, John, Sue, Lon. As they say, "a good time was had by all" |
Saturday was a "chores day" for us, but Sunday was for recreation. A search on TripAdvisor turned up a castle in the vicinity, only a 14-kilometer bike ride away. It turned out to be a fascinating day.
Built on the tip of a bluff, the Coucy Castle whose remains now inhabit the site was built in the 1220s. A descendent of the original builder converted the castle into a luxury palace in 1380. The donjon (keep) was huge by the standards of the day. At 35 meters wide and 55 meters tall it was the largest in Europe at the time. Four smaller towers surrounding the site were each as large as castle keeps generally being built in France at the time.
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| Coucy Castle as seen on our approach to Coucy from Chauny |
Systematic destruction of the castle began in 1652 with some of the building blocks carted off for building projects elsewhere. In 1692, an earthquake struck the area and resulted in a large crack in the donjon. Many of the buildings that surrounded the castle courtyard were gone before the French Revolution. During the Revolution, the ruins were seized and considered national property. In the mid-1850's, the castle and its outer bailey came under public ownership and some renovations were carried out. It became a popular tourist attraction.
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| A photograph of Coucy Castle pre-1917 |
1917 was not a good year for the castle. During WWI Coucy was occupied by the Germans starting in 1914, and they used the castle as a military outpost. They even had a "the Kaiser was here" moment. But during their 1917 "strategic retreat", the Germans used 28 tons of explosives to blow up the keep and the smaller towers.
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| A German aerial view of Coucy Castle after the explosions |
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| The ruins of the keep. The majority of the ruins of the castle were cleared as of 1925, but this mound was kept as a testimony to the destruction |
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| Remains of the Tower of Avoine. The circular grated object was the entry to the "inescapable" dungeon. Prisoners would be lowered down by rope. No windows, no doors. Horrific |
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| The defensive southern wall and its towers |
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| At the base of this defensive tower, a herd of goats is currently being used for landscaping |
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| The remains of the interior of the Great Hall |
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| Pat in the basement level of the Poterne Tower |
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| Enjoying our scramble over the ruins. The remnants of the castle proper are behind us in the distance; the other ruins are what is left of the walls that surrounded the outer bailey |
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| Some of the vaulted cellars of the castle, with photographic displays of the castle's history, and restoration workshops |
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| Lon in front of the Porte de Laon |
We've been using our bikes for these errands and sightseeing trips, and every time we do we say how much we miss the Dutch network of bike trails. It's not that the French don't bike--they are the home of the Tour de France, after all--but it's not a part of their everyday culture and most roads are narrow and without bike lanes or any kind of shoulder. Mix that with the speed of the French drivers and it's a little scary. We've encountered some perplexing/amusing things such as: a bike lane that lasted for a total of about 1 block; and traffic circles that had bike lanes on the shoulders of the roads leading up to them, then had signs specifically barring bikes from the traffic circles, and yet no way was provided for bicyclists to get to the other side of the circles where the bike lanes resumed.
Biking foibles aside, we cycled all of 3 km one-way today to the town of Noyon. Not a well-known name, yet it was in Noyon in 768 that Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks. It is also the birthplace of John Calvin, one of the leaders of Protestant Reformation. The town's main claim to fame today is that it contains one of the very few complete cathedral districts in France. Despite the town being 80% destroyed in WWI, its 12th-13th century cathedral survived, albeit needing some repair.
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| Market day today in Noyon--the streets were packed! It also made it difficult to find an open restaurant for lunch, but we succeeded! |
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| View toward the towers from the courtyard of the 13th century cloister |
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| Gothic nave, 12th century |
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| This was our favorite part of the complex, the wooden library from 1506. It's amazing that it has survived the centuries and the wars. It still serves as a library |
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| Lon at the end of the cloisters |
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