We left the Ypres area on the motorway
and quickly crossed into France with just a small sign saying we were
in France – no customs, no border. The EU sure makes travel a lot
easier. We now have to figure out all these French signs – some
are the same as Belgium, but there are a few new ones and of course,
any signs with words are only in French. The rural areas are similar
to eastern Pennsylvania – some rolling hills and vast fields of
corn and grain.
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| Every town and village has a church with a steeple |
We drove through the Somme area of
France, another important World War I area mostly involving the
French and the British. We saw many memorials and cemeteries and
signs marking the front line on various dates.
Our GPS is programmed with the latitude
and longitude of an Aire near the French city of Amiens. France has
many of these Aire motorhome stopovers with few or no services (and
no actual street addresses), but a good place to park for using
public transportation, so that we can avoid driving in the city.
Well, the GPS malfunctioned and we ended up on these one-lane country
roads many miles south of Amiens. When we re-entered our
destination, it took us right through the heart of the city. Not
quite as bad as our previous in-city driving, but it was not
pleasant, and the GPS went completely bonkers telling us to turn
left, recalculating, turn right, recalculating go 5 kilometers, make
a u-turn. If we hadn't been in such heavy traffic and narrow
streets, it actually would have been hilarious.
We finally gave up trying to find the
Aire and entered the street address of a regular campground. It
stopped giving us crazy directions and got us where we wanted to go.
We had noticed over the past year that occasionally in we would find
all these strange coordinates in the GPS memory that we had never
entered, so apparently there is something very wrong with that part
of the GPS.
During our earlier lost stage driving
through the countryside towns and villages, we were stopped by the
Gendarmes. No English, so I am thinking they would want our papers,
but in the end, all they wanted was for Jack to take a breathalyzer
test – just a random alcohol screening. They are very strict in
Europe on drinking and driving, but really, are there that many folks
out there driving drunk around noon? They passed us through without
even mentioning our lack of a front license plate.
Our campground is in a tiny village
north of Amiens. At first, we couldn't figure out these tiny rural
villages we had passed through – riding along the street, all we
saw were brick walls, and some looked like homes with curtains on the
windows, but others were just walls or looked like industrial
buildings. We finally figured it out ….think middle ages manor and
village where the peasants all lived in the town. Their homes and
outbuildings clustered around tight little streets with the manor
home nearby on a hill and the fields surrounding the village and the
peasants travel out to tend the lord's fields. Pretty much the same
thing here, but the fields are no longer owned by the lord. Our
campground is on the manor grounds (here in France, the manor is
called the chateau) with massive gates leading to the chateau
property which is now a tourist attraction.
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| Gates at the top of our campground leading to the Chateau that can be toured in the summer |
The woman at campground reception
speaks no English and my high school French is pretty non-existent,
but we figured it all out and we have a nice grassy site, but with
limited electric (10 amps).
Oh, did I mention why we are here at
Amiens? To see the largest cathedral in France..tomorrow.
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