Rural France, another world......

Or is it? After recuperating in Brussels, after the Grand Prix in Spa, we left for France and started with a couple of nights at Charleville, which is just over the border with Belgium and on the opposite side of the Ardennes to Spa, where we saw the F1 last week.

Charleville owes its name to Charles I Gonzague (1580-1637), Duke of Nevers, who decided in 1606 to found a new capital for his principality of Arches. For this purpose, he commissioned the architect Clément II Métezeau, to do the job and as a result the main square and buildings at the town centre provide a wealth of 17th century buildings that are relatively unspoiled. There was the usual bullet and artillery pockmarks in the town square, where there was some heavy fighting in November 1918. The town was liberated 2 days before the end of WWI.

 

I wonder if Charle Gonzague would have approved of his town hall being emblazoned with the motto "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite"? Probably not, as he would have in all likelihood, have been guillotined by the people who originated these sentiments, had he still been alive. Iris was particularly pleased to see a good old left-wing slogan there.

 

Although it's not shown here, there were lots of open air cafes and restaurants around the square, which we took advantage of. Plus there were some very nice patisseries tempting us into 3000 calorie buns and cakes, (that's each cake by the way).

 

A nice surprise in the town square was this old fashioned carousel. It wasn't particularly busy and pretty much as soon as someone showed up who was a fare paying passenger, off it went.

 

 

 Iris looking longingly at the carousel, (she didn't pluck up the courage to leap aboard).

 

A closer look at the carousel and I

 

Charleville sits on the river Meuse that is still navigable by some fairly large boats at this point.

We were camped just behind the trees to the right of these boats and despite its rural appearance the town centre is only 5 minutes walk in the other direction.

Puppetry is an important part of the cultural life of Charleville, which calls itself the "World Capital of Puppetry Arts". The town also holds the International Puppetry Institute, (L'Institut International de la Marionnette), which is housed in a historic building featuring a giant automaton of a puppeteer who performs a puppet show every hour, on the hour. We witnessed this puppet show at 1pm on the 26th August 2015. A day that will live in our memories for about as long as it takes to read this line.

The giant marionette has about as many moving parts as the Auckland Farmer's building Christmas Santa, (i.e.one). It looks quite scary though as it performs its hourly show and a recorded voice, (very deep), burbles some nonsense in French designed to scare children. I will rest easy now that I have witnessed the world's biggest marionette/automaton performing.

The Giant Marionette master. It's head moves slightly from side to side at all times and then on the hour its jaw moves as it speaks! The name of the Institut International de la Marionnette is emblazoned on the outside of the building and little puppets and marionettes were on sale in all of the local tat shops.

 

 

 

The mystery of the marionnette was revealed as the red doors open! A hidden pair of hands manipulating 4 blokes on a horse, could this be apocalyptic? The really exciting bit was that one finger and one of the horse's legs actually moved. How I wish I had the camera in movie mode!

The poet Arthur Rimbaud, (1854–1891) was born in Charleville. The Rimbaud museum is located in an old water mill, (Le Vieux Moulin), to the north of the town, right next to where we were camping. Apparently, Rimbaud was something of a poetic prodigy and most of his works were done in his teens and early 20's.

Rimbaud was a contempory of Paul Verlaine, (les sanglots longue, des violins de l'automne). The two of them became friends but had a somewhat tempestuous relationship and Verlaine was moved to shoot Rimbaud at one stage, (in the arm), and did 2 years inside for it! Rimbaud died prematurely of what was probably bone cancer, in his mid 30's.

We weren't sufficiently interested as to visit the Rimbaud museum but the old mill has been beautifully restored and we passed by it several times as we walked into town to get drunk our daily supplies.

After our time in Charleville we decided to head for Dijon and set out to head South via Reims and Chalons in champagne country.

Approaching Reims, we passed a small village where there were signs, (on the side of the Motorway, just before the village turn-off), advertising, (in English), a "Ball Trap" that was due to take place on the 5th of September next. Although my curiousity was aroused, I was secretly glad that we were extremely unlikely to be around to attend the event!

This tendency to use English expressions for various things is commonplace all over the continent. One good example, was in a product that Iris bought in Brussels and has a French brand name, a description of its properties in English and a  "Made in Germany" slogan, all on a small packet.

By the time we got close to Reims the weather had turned pretty foul so we decided to stay the night at a country campsite south of Reims but as the French had built a new road, our satnav Maud decided to get us hopelessly lost. We had followed the old road for about 2km but it then ended in a cul-de-sac, (a French expression that is only meaningful in England - how's that ?) We then tried to find an alternative route but then after driving down increasingly narrow lanes, we had just decided to retrace our steps to the new road, when a white van that had followed us, stopped alongside.

A young black lad wound his window down and asked, "vous etes perdu"? Which of course we were. It turned out that he had exactly the same satnav problems as us but he offered to help us back to the right location using his (alternative) cellphone satnav. This also took us in circles for a while but we ended up only about 500m from our destination at which point he admitted defeat. The main problem was that there was a canal, with no bridges in sight and a no-entry road, between us and the destination. We had another short discussion and decided that the best thing was to go back to the start of the new road and see if the satnavs would reset, which they duly did. I thanked the young lad heartily for his help and trouble. It was really great to have a complete stranger go out of his way (literally) to help us.

Five minutes after resuming on the new road we were at destination. It was a day of atrocious weather with heavy rain but no wind to disperse it. However, the site had a brilliant wifi, supplied free by the local tourist board and we caught up with all correspondence and the likes.

The rain continued the next day so we set off for destinations unknown. We dithered between heading for Orleans or Troyes for a while but Troyes, being the nearer, won out. It was a good decision as you might find out in our next post.