April 2025 – Page 2 – DJmotortouring

Dienville (Grand Est), France April 2025 (Tour 11)

Vanya chose Dienville in the Aube Department of Grand Est because, she said, she wanted to stay at Camping Le Columbier (which site has a very good write up) but, there are two champagne producing areas; one in the north around Reims, Epernay and the Valle de la Marne and another to the south-east of Troyes (the Aube) which, we have been told, produces the better grapes. As we approached Dienville, I couldn’t help but think it was perhaps the Aube champagne which was luring her to this area. No matter, it is an area that is new to the both of us and, of more interest to me, steeped in Napoleonic history.

In the blog on Brienne Le Chateau I mentioned the Battle of Brienne. On 29 January 1814, while at war against the 6th Coalition, Napoleon attacked the Prussian army at Brienne and very nearly captured the Prussian General, Gebhard Leberecht Von Blucher. Three days later, having been reinforced by Austrian troops, Blucher attacked Napoleon at La Rothiere (2 kilometres east of Dienville) and forced the French Army to retreat. It could have been a great deal worse for Napoleon had one of his Generals (Etienne Gerard) not held the bridge at Dienville against Blucher’s Austrian allies. But that’s enough of Napoleon.

Camping Le Columbier is fine – a very pretty, quiet little campsite near the centre of Dienville. Dienville itself is a village with just 700 inhabitants. There’s a bar, a baker and a chemist in the village centre but not a lot else. The village grocery store closed down but there’s a small farmer’s market every Sunday morning and a Vietnames food wagon visits the village centre every Friday evening. The owner of the wagon is actually from Laos but what the hell – his Vietnamese chicken is great!

The village’s church, L’Eglise Saint Quentin, is a bit of a gem for such a small village. It has some very impressive arches and beautiful stained glass windows. It also appeared to be surprisingly well attended. Well, it was on the Sunday morning we were there.

Another impressive feature of the village is the Market Hall building which is located directly behind the church and opposite the Hotel de Ville.

On the other side of the River Aube to the village is Port Dienville. It’s a large boating lake and leisure park at the edge of the Aube Reservoir (now known as Lac d’Amance). The reservoir was created in 1990 to regulate the flow of the Aube and Seine Rivers and the port area now comprises a burgeoning marina with a few bars and restaurants, a water sport facility and a beach area. It was fairly empty while we were there and appeared a bit of a white elephant. I hope I am proven wrong in this regard because it is a pretty area and could bring great prosperity to the village.

Okay, so there’s not a great deal more I would say about Dienville but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the village and the campsite is perfectly placed from which to explore the Aube Department. We were planning on visiting Bar sur Seine (surprise, surprise – Vanya has identified a champagne house there that she would like to visit) and I would like to visit nearby Essoyes (where the artist Renoir lived out his final years).

Brienne Le Chateau (Grand Est), France April 2025 (Tour 11)

The drive south from Soissons to our next overnight stop at Dienville took us through Champagne (via Reims, Chalons en Champagne and the small town of Brienne Le Chateau in the Aube Department of Grand Est). We’ve decided to take our time this year, avoiding all toll roads and stopping whenever we feel like it.

I like to think we stopped at Brienne Le Chateau because of my interest in all things Napoleonic but it is more likely that we stopped so that Vanya could get to drink her first champagne of this tour. She wasn’t too happy with my driving straight past Reims and Chalons en Champagne (but, come on, she’s imbibed champagne in both those places during earlier visits).

Brienne Le Chateau is where in 1779, at the age of 9, Napoleon Bonaparte first attended military school. He lived there for 5 years until, in 1784, he transferred to the Ecole Militaire in Paris. Much later, in 1814, Brienne was also the scene of one of his last battles. The town simply had to be worth a visit and I wasn’t disappointed.

Much of the old military school was destroyed during the French Revolution but in 1969 a small museum, dedicated to Napoleon’s rise through the ranks, was established in what remains of the building. It is tiny but it’s a fascinating place to visit (full of interesting records and memorabilia) and a few of his battles (including Austerlitz, Borodino and of course Brienne) can be followed on computers in the museum. My visit to the museum was enhanced by a group of Napoleonic enthusiasts role playing outside the museum. He is wholly revered in this part of France and it is small wonder that for a time, between 1849 and 1880, Brienne Le Chateau was renamed Brienne Napoleon.

There’s not a great deal to see and do in Brienne but the museum is an absolute must and the Chateau Brienne (where Napoleon stayed during 1814) is perhaps also worth a visit. Take time out, too, to look at the Hotel de Ville (the Town Hall). It is quite unlike any others I have seen in France in that it doesn’t display the usual “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” strap line across the front of the building. Instead it displays a face of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (and, if that isn’t enough, there’s a statue of Napoleon as a boy outside the front of the building). Vive L’Empereur!

On to Dienville.

Soissons (Hauts de France), France April 2025 (Tour 11)

We travelled little more than 60 miles today to Soissons; still in the Hauts de France Region but in the Aisne Department. This area was once part of Picardy. Soissons sits on the River Aisne and is one of the oldest towns in France. It was the scene of much fighting between various Gallic tribes and the Romans under Julius Caesar. Indeed, there’s an Asterix Theme Park just down the road from Soissons where “Asterix and Obelix (continue to) fight the dastardly Romans”.

Sadly, this part of France and Soissons in particular has witnessed a great deal of war and suffering over the ages, most especially during World War I. Soldiers from Great Britain and the Commonwealth, France and Germany were entrenched in and around the town for much of the First World War and some major battles (the three Battles of the Aisne) were fought in the immediate area. The ‘First Battle of the Aisne’ was an allied counter offensive immediately following the Battle of the Marne in 1914 which saw the start of trench warfare. The ‘Second’ in 1917 was a more bloody affair with France and Germany suffering respectively 271,000 and 163,000 casualties in just 12 days of battle. The ‘Third’ was the German ‘Spring Offensive of 1918’ (also known as the Kaiserschlacht) which was finally repulsed after some 5 weeks heavy fighting but not before the British lost 236,000 men, the French lost 92,000 and Germany lost 348,000. There are numerous French, German & British cemeteries and memorials throughout Aisne and at least two monuments in Soissons itself (the first of which is a plaque in the cathedral honouring more than one million British dead from the First World War who are buried in France and the second being the Monument des Anglais which lists the names of 3,387 British & Commonwealth soldiers killed in Soissons while repelling the German Spring Offensive and who have no known grave.

But, enough of war and on to Soissons itself. There’s enough to see in the town to keep most people happy for a day or two. I was intent on visiting most of the major sights, especially Soissons Cathedral and the Abbaye de Saint Jean des Vignes but; I’d also read about the street art of a certain Christian Guemy (aka C215) and was keen to track some of his works down.

I started in the town’s tourist office. A lovely lady provided me with a map identifying all the must see buildings in Soissons. She was unable find a map of Guemy’s street art and suggested I wait for her colleague to return but, after enduring a five minute monologue on haricot beans (it seems Soissons is famous for it’s extra large white haricot beans) I decided to leave and find the paintings without a map – a treasure hunt of sorts.

With the town’s Cathedral of Saint-Gervais & Saint-Protais backing on to Place de Fernand Marquigny, where the tourist office is located; my next port of call was always going to be Soissons Cathedral and it is well worth a visit. It dates back to the 12th century and, except for one tower being missing, it is almost an exact copy of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It is possible to climb to the top of the cathedral’s tower for views over Soissons but, this once, I didn’t bother. The cathedral contains a number of quite exceptional paintings; one of which, “The Adoration of the Shepherds”, is recognised at least in part as being the work of Pierre Paul Rubens and that kept me occupied for a while…

Looking every bit a cathedral itself and within easy walking distance of Soissons Cathedral (actually, almost everything within Soissons is within easy walking distance of the cathedral) are the ruins of the 11th century Abbaye de Saint-Jean des Vignes. This once magnificent abbey was ransacked by the Huguenots in 1567 and turned into a stable but it was the French Revolution which saw the abbey forever closed…

My favourite photo of the Abbey of St John of the Vines is one I took from the Place de la Republique with it’s monument to the dead of the Franco-Prussian War (the Monument aux Morts de 1870) in the foreground…

I checked out other “must see” buildings in Soissons, including L’Abbaye Saint Leger, L’Hotel de Ville, L’Eglise Saint-Pierre and the Monument des Anglais (which was closed off), but my primary interest after visiting the Cathedral and the Abbey of Saint-John was the street artwork of Christian Guemy.

Christian Guemy has been described as France’s answer to Banksy and there are examples of his work all over the world – London, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, New York, etc and even Aberdeen, Brighton and Morocco. He uses stencils and his primary interests are cats and portraits (more often than not of people that society appears to have forgotten e.g. the homeless, beggars, the aged, etc) but; in Soissons it has been directed more towards individuals with some form of connection to the town. I suspect he accepted a commission from the local council and/or tourist office.

His work is not always easy to find. Some of his creations will fill the side of a building and are easily spotted but others are small and hidden away in the most unusual places. Those I photographed below are just some of 25 he has left dotted around Soissons. I found a dozen or so.

Vanya and I walked back into town during the evening to a small creperie (Le Corsaire) I had stumbled across on Rue de la Banniere. It was tiny but the welcome was warm and friendly (especially towards Nala and Beanie) and we enjoyed it immensely. I ordered the ‘Corsaire Special’ Galette as an entree and followed it with the best ever crepe for dessert (caramelised apples with cinnamon ice cream and flambeed with a dark rum). I really cannot recall what Vanya ordered probably because I’d knocked back a jug of delicious but seriously strong Bretagne Cider.

Caramelised apples with cinnamon icecream and flambeed rum – wonderful

The stroll back through town to our Van took us past the cathedral and a couple more Guemy creations (Vanya was picking them out quicker than I ever did) and, hand on heart, I can say we both very much appreciated Soissons at night. Peaceful and typically French.

Feuilleres (Hauts de France), France April 2025 (Tour 11)

Yaaay!! It’s 9 April 2025 and we’re on the road again. That’s Vanya, Nala, Beanie and myself. After a quick breakfast in Brighton we finished loading the Van and set off via the A27 for the P&O Ferry at Dover. It was an event free journey (I’m not complaining) with surprisingly quiet roads and we arrived in good time for the 11.30 ferry to Calais.

The channel crossing itself was also uneventful (and very smooth) and within two hours we were on the road towards the tiny village (just 400 inhabitants) of Feuilleres.

Feuilleres is located on the Somme River some 30 kilometres east of Amiens in the Somme Department of Hauts de France. Vanya chose the place solely for it’s campsite (Camping du Chateau et de l’Oseraie); it being about as far south as I wanted to drive the first day out and with options to travel in all directions thereafter.

I have always found the first day of a tour very tiring and while I took time during the afternoon to explore Feuilleres and the nearby town of Peronne, I was happiest when settled down in Feuilleres with a glass of wine and some of the local bread and cheese (and not forgetting a half kilo of large, very delicious prawns which Vanya acquired during our drive south).

There is very little to Feuilleres – a small church, a restaurant-bar (closed) and the River Somme with plenty of fishing ponds – but, it served us well for the first night.

There is a considerably more to Peronne although, I wouldn’t go too far out of my way to visit the town. It was captured by German troops early in WWI and the town and surrounding area was the scene of several very bloody battles (including the three battles of the Somme) before being liberated by Australian soldiers in 1918. More than 90% of the town was destroyed during the war, including the 13th century Chateau de Peronne. The Chateau was restored in the 1970’s, renamed the ‘Historial’ and now serves as a Museum to the Great War.

I’m keeping this blog brief. On to Soissons in the morning.