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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:49:44 GMT
In my continuing explorations of the countryside near Paris I made today's destination the Canal de l'Ourcq. Not the part of the Canal de l'Ourcq in Paris but rather the starting point of the Canal de l'Ourcq, some 70 or 80 kilometers northeast of Paris. It was a beautiful, sunny fall day and I wanted to see some foliage and have an easy relaxing bike ride but there was also a little town I had wanted to visit, called La Ferté-Milon, which I knew was a charming little place that had an impressive castle ruin perched on a cliff overlooking the village. My starting point was the town of Crouy-sur-Ourcq and my destaintion was La Ferté-Milon. Stepping off the train in Crouy-sur-Ourcq the medieval past is right in front of you. The donjon in the above photos is known as the Donjon du Houssouy. It was built on top of an 11th century fortress and dates to the end of the 14th century. Built by the local seigneur, Robert de Sepoix, it was partially destroyed during the civil revolt known as the Fronde and again during a siege by the Duc de Lorraine in 1652. The village used to be much more lively in the past owing to its position on the adjacent Canal de l'Ourcq, which attracted commerce, merchants and artisans to the region, and was renowned for its market. The train station was on the outskirts of the village so I pedalled towards the town center to have a look around. Here's the local museum, housed in some sort of an old building. Below is the local church, L'Eglise Saint-Cyr et Sainte-Juliette. It dates to the 12th century and was rebuilt in 1550. It was closed when I was here but it's supposed to have some old churchy things inside. You'll notice a rare gathering of a people in this photo, atypical of most of my tiny country village visits.
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:50:40 GMT
I was planning on having lunch in a little restaurant in Crouy. A poster on a travel forum had mentioned having an excellent (and cheap) lunch in this place and said it was great home cooking. Unfortunately when I arrived in town I found that the restaurant had gone out of business. I knew from doing a bit of research that there was another nice little restaurant in town but that was closed because it was Monday. I needed lunch and my only options for food were a little alimentation générale (mini-grocery store) and the boulangerie (baker). I opted for the boulangerie and stepped inside to see if they had sandwiches. They didn't have any prepared but these places usually make sandwiches if you ask for one. So I asked for a sandwich and the counter lady went to go make my sandwich. There was no one in the store when I arrived but as soon as I placed my order the entire village lined up behind me, as the line quickly extended outside the door. So there I am, the one jerk non-local who's holding up the rest of the village from getting their baguette because I had to ask for something special and the one employee in the store had to leave the counter to make it for me. Then when she came back I had to ask her to cut it in two for me, explaining I needed to put it in the saddle bag on my bike. ''Oh'' she said, ''I'll have to go wrap it up for you then so you don't get mayonaise all over everything''. This precipitated another trip to the back of the store since she was out of plastic wrap and she needed aluminum foil. It's usually obvious to locals that I'm not French when I start speaking as they detect my foreign accent. So now the whole village knows they've got some weird foreigner making unusual requests and generally interrupting their daily routine. I paid for my sandwich and let the village return to normal life. After leaving the village center I passed by the train station again and just a short way down the road from there arrived at the canal. I had no idea what kind of road might be running along the canal. Would it be paved? Would it be a cart path? Would it be just two dirt ruts? It was rough riding at first. The surface was hard packed dirt but there were a lot of rough stones, some packed into the ground some loose. I was hoping the whole trail wasn't like this and after about 1km it turned into smooth, packed dirt with no stones and I was rolling nicely. The Canal de l'Ourcq provides half of the 380,000m3 of water needed daily for cleaning the sewers, gutters and parks in Paris. Starting just over 100km northeast of Paris in the little village of Silly-la-Poterie it twists and meanders following the contours of its source river, The Ourcq, until it reaches the Marne River near Meaux where it leaves its source behind. It arrives in Paris at the Cité des Sciences in the 19th arrondissement where it splits in two with one branch heading north out of Paris as the Canal Saint-Denis and the other branch continuing into Paris, emptying into the Bassin de la Villette, continuing as the Canal Saint-Martin and ending as the Bassin de l'Arsenal where it reaches the Seine. This whole system of canals was created through a series of decrees issued by Napoléon in 1802, although the project itself had been conceived in 1785. Specifically, he wanted to divert the Seine from the Bassin de l'Aresenal to the Bassin de la Villette where it joined with the two primary canals. The purpose was to provide drinking water and also to provide shipping channels to reduce the number of ships on the Seine in central Paris. The Seine was not damned at the time. The canal system was open for operation in 1822. I was riding along the oldest part of the canal system. The first works on the canal were inspired by the need to provision Paris with grain, firewood and timber for construction taken from the Forest of Retz, property under the Ancient Régime of the Valois and Orléans families. The forest was also a huge domain for hunting and generated considerable revenue. Francis de Valois (later Francis I) reorganized the forest to suit his passion for hunting, creating a system of forest roads, building a château and capturing sources of water. According to legend (meaning possibly not true), in the early 16th century it was Leonardo da Vinci who installed a lock-chamber system on the Ourcq River, the first such attempt in France. After 1560 canalization of the river commenced with a new system of locks and reservoirs and throughout time further works were carried out. If you want to learn more about the canal and can read French you can look at these two websites. The first is a history of the canal: www.aufildelourcq.org/histoire/index.phpThe next link is great even if you don't read French as it has lots of 19th and early 20th century photos taken along the canal. Scroll about halfway down the page and there is a humorous anecdote involving the music group Pink Floyd. projetbabel.org/fluvial/rica_ourcq-canal.htm
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:51:52 GMT
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:53:00 GMT
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:54:06 GMT
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:55:20 GMT
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:56:24 GMT
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:57:27 GMT
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:58:34 GMT
It was due to the presence in the 5th century of Saint Waast and Saint Vulgis that La Ferté-Milon was born. Chapels and monasteries were built in their memory at the same time that a ''ferté'' was being created, meaning a defended place. The town had such a reputation for virtue that in 884, Paris, under the menace of the vikings, sent the relics of Sainte-Geneviève for protection. In the 8th century the local seigneur Milon built a fortress fortified with ramparts and thus the etymology of the town's name. In 1395 Louis d'Orléans, second son of king Charles V, undertook construction of the château whose remains exist today. At the time Louis was battling his uncle, Philippe le Hardi, who was allied with the Burgundians during the Hundred Years War. The castle was part of a defensive lines of fortresses built along the frontier of the Valois duchy, one of which is the famous Château de Pierrefonds. Work on the château stopped in 1407 when Louis was assassinated by the followers of Jean sans Peur. His daughter Marguerite inherited the château but abandoned it. In 1429 Joan of Arc stopped in La Ferté on her way to Reims. At the end of the 16th century the Wars of Religion ravaged the area and The Catholic Leaugue took possession of the unfinished château. The town refused to submit to Henry IV and he laid seige to it. The town eventually submitted and afterwards the king ordered the château to be dismantled. The demolition commenced on the 25th of December 1594 and took 28 days. The château in its present state is the result of that demolition and has looked more or less the same for the past 4 centuries. Other horrifying and devastating events menaced the town during the civil revolt known as The Fronde in the mid 17th century, then again during The Revolution and then again during WWI. A history similar to many other northern French towns and villages. It looks pretty well fixed up today after all those centuries of ravaging and you'd never know today that such things used to happen here. I was at the river and the château was high up on a hill above the town so it was time to do some uphill riding. La Ferté-Milon is the birthplace of the famous playwright Jean Racine. Orphaned at the age of 4 he was raised by his grandparents in the town until the age of 10. The town has a Jean Racine Museum and among items in the collection are letters, engravings, portraits and some original editions of his works as well as the accompanying music. There are also numerous items that relate to the history of La Ferté. The museum is open from April 1st to November 1st on weekends and holidays and the rest of the year during the week but only on reservation for groups with the tourist office. Here's the Jean Racine statue. Here's the Eglise Notre Dame, built in the 13th century and modified in successive centuries. Arriving at the top of the hill the château was to my right but I took a left to keep climbing above the château so I could get some scenic views of the area from the heights of the summit.
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 13:59:45 GMT
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 8, 2013 14:01:16 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2013 18:59:38 GMT
FMT, I am in total admiration of this canal report but also in admiration of the remarkable upkeep of the canal. Those chemins de halage (towing trails) appear to be pretty challenging for a bicycle, but the fact that they still exist is great, since obviously canal boats have motors now and don't need to be dragged by draught animals.
Another thing that I was happy to see was the upkeep of the trees along the canal. There are venerable old trees, others in perfect maturity and also lots of saplings that have not been there for long. Much care is clearly taken to keep the trees in prime condition and to remove those that are diseased and to replace them.
The canal itself looks great even though it is next to useless now for "industrial" use, but that might change since France is promoting water cargo as energetically as possible. People are fully capable of devising mixed use small barges to take things to all of these villages -- all that is lacking at the moment is the willpower.
It goes without saying that the villages are wonderful, some of them with heritage coming out of their ears and others just living their admirable normal village lives. Sometimes I feel really ashamed at how bored I would be living in a village.
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Post by htmb on Nov 8, 2013 20:56:11 GMT
FMT, this report is a delicious treat! I enjoyed following your ride down the canal, as well as the side trips. All very interesting. This would certainly be a place I'd love to explore. Your telling of history makes me want to go back and re-read carefully, as I am very interested and seem to have picked a good bit of French history over the past few years.
I would love living in a small French town and, as long as I had a bike, access to good public transportation, and reliable Internet, I'd be very content.
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Post by fumobici on Nov 8, 2013 21:19:57 GMT
Thanks for sharing this bucolic bike ride FMT. You took good advantage of both your VTT and the day. That château still looks somewhat mantled however, luckily.
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Post by fumobici on Nov 8, 2013 21:22:43 GMT
I'm afraid I might find day to day life in one of these charming sleepy little historic villages a little dull myself. But perhaps I wouldn't. I've never lived in a truly small town. Frankly the prospect scares me.
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Post by questa on Nov 8, 2013 22:58:36 GMT
A beautiful collection of pictures, FMT. Apart from deciduous trees planted by homesick Northern hemisphere settlers, our trees in Oz are pretty monochromatic. The autumnal pictures in your and others' photos make me quite envious. Our trees keep their leaves but in hot weather drop layers of bark to cover their roots. Thus we get the mess but not the colour.
Then when a fire goes through, the native vegetation survives and re-grows while the 'old country' trees just die.
I like looking at autumn colours, though.
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Post by mossie on Nov 9, 2013 12:04:11 GMT
Many thanks for this beautiful photo essay, and for slogging your bike up those hills, far too steep for me at any age. The history is a bonus, i believe another reason for the canal was to supply Paris with a better water than that which was then provided by a very heavily polluted Seine. It also of course still provides much water for the daily ritual of washing the pavements of Paris.
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Nov 9, 2013 16:04:17 GMT
kerouac - The fist km of my ride was pretty rough on loose cobbles but afterwards was fairly smooth, even though most of the ride was in two dirt ruts. If you just stay in one of the ruts it's a fairly easy ride. It's evident that at least a few times a year they are pruning the trees. The canal is supposed to be open for pleasure craft although I didn't see any. Also, you are technically not allowed to ride your bike along there and indeed in a couple of places I saw signs prohibiting bikes. But unofficially it's OK to ride your bike there and I read up on a few French websites where other bikers said it was OK to ignore the restriction. I imagine the no biking signs are merely a means to avoid legal responsibility.
htmb - Don't confuse me with an actual historian. I get most of my info from wikipedia and the official websites for each town I visit, or their tourist office websites if they have one. Or perhaps from random google searching. Even from a small town like La Ferté-Milon it is still only just over an hour to Paris so you're not that removed from civilization. I don't know that I'd want to live in a small village yet I don't want to live in Paris either. I like being close to the action but not in it. Too much noise in Paris and not enough to do in a small village. Where I live now is just outside Paris and is a good compromise between the two.
fumobici - The château was never fully completed so I imagine they only tore down the parts that might have been habitable. It's like they were daring someone to try to finish the château just leaving the facade standing.
questa - I'm originally from New England in the U.S. which is famous for its fall foliage. I love the fall during foliage time and though the foliage in northern France isn't as spectacular as in New England it's still pretty good. I can't imagine the fall season without foliage.
mossie - If you just shift down into the granny gear and take your time going up those hills it isn't much harder than walking, although you run out of energy quicker on the bike. I did mention the canal provides drinking water and is used for cleaning the streets. I always wonder if there was any filtering process when water was taken from the Seine for drinking. I can't imagine just drinking water straight from the Seine. What were people thinking?
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