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France - Champagne |
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Champagne - August 1999
We decided to head for France for the Total
Solar Eclipse, 11th August 1999. Since it was on a Wednesday, and passed through
the Champagne region, it seemed like an excellent excuse for a week long trip.
Laon
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 Laon is
one of the gems of the Aisne region, it's gothic Cathedral Notre-Dame (left) built
in the c.12th is magnificent, and many features were copied from it onto the Notre-Dame
Cathedral of Paris. |
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walled upper town can be reached through ancient gates as shown above, or on the cute POMA
2000, shown left. It is the world's first pilotless, rubber-tyred, cable-hauled
aerial metro.
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Reims
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Bony
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 Reims lay on the centre-line of the track of the Eclipse, and it's most famous landmark, the
massive Cathedral had trucks, and TV crews setting up huge scaffolding to film the eclipse
at there. It was still worth a visit though, if only to see the wonderful colours of
the Marc Chagall designed stained glass, set in one chapel, which replaced glass lost in
the war.26 kings of France were crowned in Reims Cathedral, including when Joan of Arc
got the Dauphin Charles VII crowned in 1429. |
The first world war American Cemetery near the village of Bony (seriously).
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Chalons
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Troyes
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Chalons-en-Champagne is a quiet town, with pretty timbered houses, and a canal
passing through.
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 The ancient capital of Champagne, Troyes is well worth a visit, it is full of
medieval lanes, timbered houses, and gothic churches.Henry V of England married
Catherine of France in the Église St-Jean here after being recognised as heir to the
French throne in the 1420 Treaty of Troyes.
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Verdun
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| If ever you need a lesson about the true cost of war, Verdun is as good a
place as you will find to visit. Nearly a million people lost their lives here in
just 10 months in 1916, nine villages in the area no longer exist, simply wiped from the
landscape, with only old maps to prove they were ever there. The picture below left,
taken from the top of the tower, shows less than half of the extent of the cemetery, which
contains fifteen thousand graves. Even that pales next to the Ossuary, shown below
right, every stone on the walls inside is inscribed with names of missing men, the vaults
contain the bones of 150,000 dead who could not be identified. |
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It is said that Verdun indirectly claimed another million souls, those
that died at the Somme, a battle the allies started to relieve the pressure on their army
at Verdun.
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Douai
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Cambrai
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Though badly damaged in both world wars, Douai is an attractive town which was once a
haven for English Catholics escaping oppression in Tudor England. Many eighteenth
century houses still survive, and it has both a canal and river passing through. |
A quiet pleasant town, worth a brief stay to view the Rubens which is
sited in the Église St-Géry.  Cambrai is famous as the site of the world's first tank battle in
1917. In 24 hours over 400 British tanks advanced further than either side had since
1914. After two weeks and 50,000 lives though, both armies were back where they
started. Lack of reliability proved to be the tanks downfall.
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