Four hops then home

Ends of journeys are unsettling. It is difficult not to perceive them as some sort of downward trajectory. If stories have an arc, then so do journeys. I am reminded of the final few lines of Larkin's Whisun Weddings:

I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

He really is the master of quiet despondency, which is how the end of a journey feels, I think. Gill cannot be doing with this fanciful stuff. Instead she has coined a succinct term for the feeling - 'endishness'. It encapsulates neatly in one word something that took Mr. Larkin 12 intricate lines to say.

Sadly France has become the unintentional victim of 'endishness' because more often than not it is our route home. The temptation is to stay in the south for as long as possible then dash through France with a Dover deadline in mind. This results in  using familiar routes that avoid tolls, but are quick, over-nighting in places that we know have good facilities and are convenient. So despite hundreds of visits to France  parts of the country remain unfamiliar, particularly many of its cities: Dijon, Geneva, Lyon, Poitier, Nantes, Anger, Limoges, Poitier, Strasboug are among the many places we have sped past. The same is true of the countryside, parts of the Auvergne, the Chartreuse and l'Ecrin, and Ile de France are all blanks on our inner map. It would be nice to be able to say this time we made a concerted effort to change and we found a new, interesting route home. We didn't, endishness triumphed, four hops then home - Stenay, Haybes, Bavey, Arques, Buxton.

Stenay

The route north from Turckheim was straightforward - over the Vosges via the Col de Bonhomme, then northwards following the valley of the Meuse. We have in the past been very rude about the Vosges, drawing parallels between its straggling villages and Royston Vesey. We speculated whether the fact that the area has become to symbolise the face of  France at its most run-down, dreary and deprived is the result of visiting mainly in March in drizzle. Today under sunny skies the countryside was lovely but the towns and villages still looked like a set from a Gallic version of 'League of Gentlemen'. There appeared to have been a concerted effort by the local Mairies to 'brighten-up' the place. This consisted in the main of applying the same day-glo paint noted on the facades of the houses in the nearby wine villages to various items of street furniture - planters in the main. It did  contrast startlingly with dreariness of the buildings; however the effect was to highlight the desolation rather than relieve it.

Now we were heading north following the valley of the Moselle. At Nancy the river turns left heading for Germany. We drove staight on, across a low ridge and into the watershed of the Meuse, following signs for Verdun. It's a gentle, pastoral landscape of broad horizons and big skies. Nearing Verdun we crossed series of low ridges. It was the struggle to command these ridges that resulted in almost one million casualties in 1916. The Battle of Verdun was possibly the most costly single military encounter in human history. Like in the Somme region, military cemeteries line the road. It's a sad prospect. We are at best ambivalent about the paraphernalia and rhetoric of commemoration. It seems to us that the focus on 'sacrifice' and 'bravery', the military bands and uniforms that accompany such ceremonies, normalise and give credence to war. There are no winners or losers in a war, soldiers are as much victims of it as civilians. We do need to remember, but in such a way that celebrates and develops peace and conflict resolution. The iconography of remembrance - poppies et al -sentimentalises war, that in itself is a kind of trivialising acceptance.

As well as the official cemeteries local villages were advertising a variety of re-enactment events. I am not ambivalent at all about military re-enactment. To me it is a kind of historical pornography, a  puerile, cartoon version of real events designed to showcase an alluring fantasy - 'bang bang, you're dead!' (editing in later - this post today on Motorhome Adventures sums up the point - why would anyone want to do this as a leisure activity - with kids?)

We were pleased to drive on beyond the shadow of war. Stenay, our end point, has a somewhat grandiosely titled museum of its own, 'Le Musée Européen de la Bière'. We visited it the last time we were here. I like the place because it celebrates the innocuous and the mundane, but in this case the intoxicatingly so. One way of celebrating peace is to give greater credence to everyday human existence, the things that sustain and celebrate our 'mortal span'. No time for a second visit. another time, I am owed a beer at the beer museum as the last time I was there I was on medication that reacted badly with alcohol.

Stenay is a great place to stop. The aire is run by the capitanerie by some locks on the Meuse. Places like this make motorhome travel so simple. It's not surprising we make a bee-line for these places. France is not always charming, but this evening it was, from the delightful young woman managing the place to the pleasant waterside stroll after dinner.

Haybes

Gradually France's Camping Municipal's are being sold off by local Mairies. Nevertheless,  2,800 of them still remain. They do feel like a blast from the past, a relic of mid 20th century collectivism struggling-on into the hyper-personalised, individualistic now. One site which lists them describes the them like this:

"Going on a holiday in a municipal campsite is a bit of a trip back in time: finding France in the 50s, 60s, 70s ... That kind of a lazy, nonchalant post-war era, or conviviality, simplicity, human relationships at the heart of social life."

At best they provide a cheap, serviceable place to stay, clean and well maintained; at worst they provide a cheap place to stay... Haybes falls into the 'best' category, well mainly, with the bonus of being right by the river Meuse in the middle of the most picturesque section of the French Ardennes gorge. The Meuse cycle path runs right by the campsite too. In all but one aspect the place is an excellent place to stop for one or two nights.

What is the downside? That would be the WC chemique, the worst designed I have ever come across. I cannot even bring myself to explain the issue in detail...

Bavay

Free Aire Municipals - the other thing that makes moho travel in France so easy. Bavay's aire is free. It has minimal facilities, but it is peaceful at night and a short walk through a pleasant park to the town centre with good local shops. I guess we would never have come this way but for the fact it is only a couple of kilometres from Gill's sister's place. We had a good catch-up with family news and a quick visit to Belgium for a woodland walk followed by a meal outside in the garden.

The most unusual aspect of the walk was that a nearby community set-up to support adults with learning difficulties had an open day. In particular, as well as crafts and pottery for sale, the gardens were free to visit. They were somewhat strange, slightly surreal and a tad un-nerving. They reminded me a little of the Dali Museum, or at least a Belgian version of it. It is no co-incidence that Belgian artists figured strongly in the movement - particularly Magritte, and the 'magic realist' Paul Delvaux.

Arques

It's too far to drive to Calais and then all the way home from Bavay. We have experimented with all kinds of variations - using a stop-off in Kent, the aires at Wissant or Bergues, but on the last two trips we have parked in the aire outside the Camping Municipal at Arques, near St. Omer. Again a simple place, which only costs 7 euros, situated prettily next to a fishing lake, .The motorhome service point is well designed too and makes 'emptying the tanks' simple; a boon, if like us you have to put the van straight into storage when you get back.

Home

By our standards six weeks is not a long trip. Long enough to make the normality of everyday England look a tad strange. These are not good times, things are beginning to look shabby and run-down after years of self imposed austerity. Many people too look a bit dishevelled, ill or sad. True, motorway services are probably not the best places to base sweeping generalisations - but they are used by a cross-section of the population. People in general looked a bit miserable.

Home- why is the weather alway overcast as we near Buxton. I cannot recall arriving back on a nice sunny day that would tempt you to think, 'it's nice to be back'.

Instead the lawn looked like a meadow! It took me two days of hard graft to get from this:

to this:

Time to resume our boring middle class existence. Until our youngest is a bit more settled and has found work it is difficult to make plans for an autumn trip, well we can make plans, realising them may be a tad trickier.