Perfect peace in Picardy

I don't know if I can really express how much I love the north eastern parts of France where we've just spent a few days, especially Picardy, which speaks to me in so many ways. 

Koos and I last went on a car trip to the area in 2011 and I wrote about it here. For this mini-break, we decided on two nights at a Chambre d'Hôtes so as to spend some time revisiting places we remembered. We also wanted to do some investigating on our beloved Canal de la Sambre where we went by boat last year as far as Landrecies (which I wrote about here). Our hope is to travel its length on the Hennie Ha when a) the collapsed aqueduct at Vadencourt has been repaired and b) the Hennie Ha's engine is replaced.

Picardy is an incredibly rich agricultural bread basket. It has sweeping hills swathed in wheat and grass, contrasted with broad acres of green green kale. There are wooded copses on the crests of the rises, and valleys where lazy cattle feed on the left over hay after the harvesters have done their work. There are gorgeous villages, fortified churches, magnificent farm yards and above all, that meandering canal that itself is criss-crossed by an even more meandering river Oise. For me, it has everything I love, and love it I do.

The photos below are of the places we visited on the way down on Tuesday.

That meandering Canal de la Sambre et Oise at Oisy

A lock keeper's house at Oisy 

Etreux on the Canal de la Sambre et Oise

The canal at Etreux

Etreux

Sweeping grain fields

A water tower with a nod to art: Mathisse remembered

The Oise and a water mill outside Guise

Farm buildings in Flavigny 

A bridge over the canal de la Sambre at Longchamps, where
we ate a picnic supper

The village where we stayed was called Proisy about 10kms from Guise,  a town steeped in history, which is connected to British history too as Mary of Guise was the mother of Mary Queen of Scots. However, Proisy is about as rural as it gets and our hosts, Sylvie and Bruno, were so relaxed and unfazed about security they were quite happy to leave the doors unlocked all night. Formerly a village with a factory at its heart, Proisy is now a sleepy one street hamlet with a church, and a traditional lavoir (natural spring where the locals did their washing) but with no shops at all, not even a bakery. The house we stayed in used to be a local hostelry (an estaminet) and there was once both a bakery and a small grocer’s too. However, as with so many French villages, these have closed and the locals have to travel to Guise to do their shopping. It made me wonder how the old folk manage as there didn't appear to be much in the way of public transport either.

The villagers were very friendly and approachable and on our walk one evening, we chatted to a man who has bought a row of old cottages and is converting them to apartments. We also met the 'lady of the manor' from the chateau, a neat elderly madame who was out walking a small, but active bulldog. Apparently, she walks dogs for others in the community and we later saw her with a Labrador.

She wasn't at all grande for a grande dame and was very willing to stop and chat. I wasn't all too sure about what she was chatting as her charge for the evening was very noisy and busy.  It took her quite some effort to keep him under control, so her speech was frequently punctuated with 'viens’ and 'tiens’ and 'non', and it was hard to follow the thread. It didn't seem to matter, though. When she had finished explaining whatever it was she was telling us, she wished us a good evening and dragged her busy bossy bulldog away. A nod and a smile work in every language.

There are several houses for sale in the village, which of course got our dreaming juices going. Realistically, though, we'd be better off staying with Bruno and Sylvie or hiring the gite (holiday cottage) they are busy renovating than contemplating a purchase or long term rental in such a distant place – quite apart from the fact we’d have to sell the crumbly cottage to do so.

Guise, where we too had to go for food and shopping, is quite a complicated town to navigate. We got lost several times, which meant we saw a lot of it unintentionally – but fortuitously. It's well worth a visit. There are the remains of the old castle at the top of the hill, which we saw several times – inadvertently. Then there is a charming old centre complete with cobbled streets and winding alleys that all seem to be dead ends when you're trying to get through them. The river Oise runs around the town and there are a couple of other tributaries that tunnel their way through to meet it, so we kept coming across bridges over these streams – always a welcome surprise.

Other places we visited were Tupigny, Vadencourt and Macquigny, all situated on the Canal de la Sambre et Oise (it is also called the Canal de la Sambre à l’Oise). Sadly, we found the repairs to the aqueduct have made little progress, so even if the Hennie Ha is ready to roll next year, I doubt if we'll get further than Tupigny, which is the last village and lock  before the collapsed structure. The French waterways authorities will need to get very busy if they're to keep their promise of having it open in 2020.

Apart from that, we just revelled in the glorious scenery and the beauty of the rural villages where there were no tourists and the silence of the hot afternoon sang in the air. It had an almost surreal emptiness broken only by the occasional car roaring past. The heat was intense, in the upper thirties centigrade; on Thursday, it reached 40C. But by then we were heading home – where it was also 40C but with the added joy (not) of high humidity. 

Here are a few more photos I took during the three days we were there:

Fortified church in Monceau sur Oise

Golden straw medals in the fields. We watched the famers harvesting the wheat
and then baling the straw to make these beautiful bales

The lock at Tupigny 

Swallows on the telephone lines. It was a joy to watch them swooping
and soaring over the farm yards

Cows left to graze the remaining hay.

A WWI war memorial with fortified church in the background

The only lived in lockhouse we saw, and boy wasn't it pretty?

Zoomed in photo of this wonderful fortified church

There's so much more I could write about, but I don't want to overdo it this time. Perhaps I'll focus on some individual aspects next time. I'll see.

For now, have a good weekend allemaal and keep cool if you are in the north, or warm for those in the south.