Le Tour or La Farce

Over the last three weeks, like millions the world over, we have been following Le tour. Moving from being keen enough to get accommodation where we can see a stage finish and a start the following day to one of just being amazed at yet another drug scandal. At Jaulzy, we were just a few kilometers from the route. The town was well decked out as you would expect, but not too crowded. Plenty of tour groupies around like this duo.

Surprise lunch

One Friday we decided to take a walk up over the hill behind us towards Pierrefonds, a small village with a big chateau rebuilt by Napoleon III and designed by Viollet-Le-Duc. In the event, we ran out of puff and just had to stop for at least a coffee at a nice looking auberge. Once inside (and for once our timing was right), we just had to stay for lunch. The service was friendly, all local people and it was one of those surprises that brings you back to the reality of why we are here.

Just to be completer finishers for a change we jumped into the car on the following Sunday afternoon and drove over to the nice auberge, parked the car and then finished our walk to Pierrefonds and back. Big mistake!!! Pierrefonds looks better when you drive through and we failed in our aim to find a nice restaurant for Yvonne's birthday lunch. To top it off, the sky dumped half of the Atlantic ocean during our return walk. Weather is now a major news item everyday and we are promised rain storms for the remainder of the week.

We can hardly wait for Le Tour to come to Compiegne.

Picardie

We just had to return to Villers-Bretonneux and check out some of the WWI cemeteries. Whilst we have been to the Australian memorial plusiers fois, mostly for ceremonies in the 1980s, we had never really checked the site out nor climbed the tower to find the view. So another tick in the box.

We also visited memorials around Albert. They are interesting but what a waste of lives. Leadership incompetance and power hungry politicians just do not go away. The weather was reasonable for a change as was the lunch at Le Kangarou restaurant in V-B.

Tourist activities

We have checked out Compiegne and Soissons. They are quiet country towns and it is quite interesting to watch the locals interacting. We have also travelled over to Reims and Epernay just for the day to visit the champagne caves of Moet and Chandon. Just to make sure that we have checked out all the shops during the current summer sales, we took the train into Paris and les grands magasins for the day. Sarah had seen the key sites of Paris before so was more interested in where the rich and famous do their shopping and taking in the cafe scene. Randall spent a couple of hours with a coffee or two.

As usual, Paris at this time of the year is full of tourists struggling with their maps and emerging from the metro trying to agree which way to go.

More on Jaulzy

The gite is based on your typical living downstairs, bedrooms upstairs configuration. Downstairs there is one double bedroom with ensuite (and another closet with washing machine of course), a comfortable lounge area, dining area and an adequate kitchen. Upstairs there is a double bedroom, another bed in the attic area and a kids bedroom. There is also a mezzanine reading area. Toilet in a closet and a dwarf shower.

So we like the gite itself for its spaciousness but the location is not for us.

Relics from other days in our area

This area of France looks fairly depressed economically to us and with the grey weather and lack of a local cafe to while away the time, we are having to be more innovative to amuse ourselves than we would like. Up behind us and as the land flattens out into great plains of wheat etc, we find quite a few reinders of either or both world wars. Now used by locals for rubbish, or storage or youth hideaways or whatever. Not great places for us tourists.

Jaulzy Gite

Managed to get this published after a bit of mucking around with internet cafes etc. I always do things the hard way these days and I do not get any younger. Well here we are in rainy downtown Jaulzy. Just toprove me wrong in assuming that an address of rue d'Eglise is not in the centre of town and on the square with the coffee places, we are certainly located next to the church but no services now in the two weeks we have been here. Probably not used since 16 th century. No houses within 50 metres, no traffic so dead quiet at night. The Gite itself is quite good if a little under-maintained. So we continually learn just a little bit more each time. Slow learners.