We left Berne on Thursday, having booked a
room for the night in the outskirts of Reims.
Since we weren’t rushing to catch a train, we took the amble option,
driving up through the Jura from Yverdon via Pontarlier and on to
Besançon. As far as Besançon, the
scenery is very pleasant – and the road works are numerous enough for the
driver to get a good look at it. From
there onwards, we did a fair number of national and departmental roads, but
even on a fine day such as Thursday the scenery was flat and uninspiring, and
we soon opted to switch to motorways and click up the miles a bit more quickly. Besançon-Dijon-Reims is a good route, if you’re
heading for the channel ports, since it avoids most big centres of
population. The Dijon-Reims-Calais
section has come to be known as the Autoroute des Anglais. It is not, however, one of the most scenic
drives in France. We stayed the night in
a chain hotel in the retail/industrial west side of Reims: it was adequate: we’d
gone for a mid-scale place, so got a decent sized room. It didn’t look that way when we got in: the
receptionist, rather than ask questions, directed us to a room with the sofa
bed folded out and made up, so space was kind of tight until we folded it back
to sofa configuration again. We dined
quite adequately at a Courtepaille fast food joint next door, and dispensed
with breakfast next morning at €14 per man, choosing instead to have tea and
biscuits from our own supplies, and to stop for a croissant a bit later. This we did in Saint-Quentin, where we emerged
from the underground car park to a serenade of bells ringing 08:30 from the
roof of the town hall. With those sounds
and the appearance of the buildings round the square, I could have imagined
myself in Belgium. There is a lot of
fine art nouveau and art deco architecture to see – and the square boasts a ‘beach’
of imported sand such as I’ve seen in Brussels and Mons in the summer.
The Jura bit was a nice reminder of a
frequent train journey when I worked in Paris: I used to get the train from
Berne that connected with the Lausanne-Paris TGV at Frasne. It was a slow business, but worth it for the
scenery – even if the wait at Frasne could be a glacial experience. In the early days of my use of the line, it
involved a change of engines and border checks at Pontarlier, but latterly they
operated it with the multi-current ‘grey mouse’, a train that originally served
the TEE routes, with a customs man occasionally joining the train at Neuchâtel. One set has since been restored to its TEE
livery and fittings, and there was a special service on it from Zürich to Milan
while we were in Switzerland. We
enquired about the price, and made other arrangements…
We arrived back on Friday (Mr Engineer
Smith’s 65th birthday). Although
we were booked on an evening crossing, we decided we’d just turn up and see
what they offered us. Interestingly,
when we looked at the Eurotunnel site the night before in Reims, it offered us
a change of reservation for a £5 charge.
Turning up on spec seven hours before our scheduled booking, we were
offered a crossing on the next shuttle but one, with no extra charge. In fact, we actually got on an earlier
crossing, so were at Coquelles for barely long enough to do the border checks
and drive to the shuttle train. Only
four of the carriages were used in our half of the train, lower deck only: 16
vehicles all told – including a Honda people carrier registered in Ohio (its
owner told me he’d found the drive rather long…) and a rather splendid early
1950s Lagonda drop-head coupé.
For no good reason, I rather hogged the
driving from Reims, and in consequence was more tired on reaching
Disgustedville than I need have been. We
could see from the main road that the first route into town was badly congested,
and the second exit, to the notorious industrial estate was as bad, if not
worse. We finished up going on to our
semi-homophonous neighbouring town and taking the winding narrow lanes. They too were full of fellow rat-runners,
which tested the sang-froid somewhat. We
got home unscathed, though.
As usual, there was a mound of post waiting
for us, much of which found its way straight to the bin. The garden was looking pretty good thanks to
Andy, who had been round to cut the grass for us while we were away. The tomatoes have not ripened as much as I
had expected, but I gather that there was dull weather and rain for much of the
time we were away. The cosmos have come
into flower, adding a spot of bright colour here and there, and a few of last
year’s sweet William seedlings have come into flower. Potentilla, cistus, penstemon, hydrangea and hypericum
are giving a lot of colour, as are some of the roses, notably the new one, the
Justice of the Peace.
 |
| Floribunda Rose, The Justice of the Peace (Fryers Roses, Cheshire, 2011) |
So, it’s back to the usual routines. I’m scheduled in court on three days in August, and have a couple of things to organize for the car – a routine service,
plus fixing a dent in the tailgate and consequent problems with the release
button (one of us backed it into a wall in Lagrasse). Not sure it’ll be possible to get that done
before we head out again in four weeks’ time, but we’ll see. It is still functioning, so it isn’t urgent. We’ve seen one of the mallards, the female,
since we returned, but guess they’ve found some other mugs to feed them!
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