clairedavieswriter

After yesterday’s food desert, I fear today I may have overcompensated. Having set out with a banana, three madeleines and a protein bar, I then stopped at the boulangerie and added a pain au chocolat. Do you do sandwiches? I asked. Désolée, said Madame La Boulangère, but she knew someone who did. Imagine my surprise that Bièvre had a one of these.

And a very professionally stuffed sandwich it was too, when I came to eat it later, on the shady doorstep of a derelict house in the tiny village of Grapfontaine.

Mist was hanging thickly in the treetops as I set out at 8am and the looming hills were cloaked in shades of grey

But the sky soon cleared, and although the sun was hot, the hills weren’t as demanding as yesterday. Team Bernard nonetheless enjoyed the cool shade of the woods:

And pine forests:

But for the most part, we were out in open country

Where it was hard to believe it ever gets cold, but given we were around 500m above sea level, it clearly does:

So you could see why the farmers might want to make hay while the sun shines:

The balers were yet to come and there were very few people about but the peace of today belied the conflicts of the past. Just before the village of Ochamps, at the top of a hill, I came upon this tiny chapel…

And beside it a memorial to the French and German soldiers killed on 22 August 1914 in the battle of Le Chemin des Croix. Just as I was reading the information board, a military jet flew overhead – it seems we never learn

A bit further on I passed this simple memorial, set in a circle of trees, that marked the burial place of a number of German soldiers. It was a peaceful spot, but the grass was knee-high, the paving stones crumbling, and there was no inscription of any kind. It seemed a sorry way to honour their sacrifice.

Back on the road, the crest of every hill held the promise of another and while I was still well-stocked with snacks, I was running short on water

I scanned villages in vain for people to accost: front gardens were as empty as my bottles. Finally, after a not particularly pleasant last few kilometres on the hard shoulder of a main road, I reached my hotel in Arlon, and fell upon their water fountain like a woman finding an oasis in the Gobi. After that, the obvious thing to do was get back on the bike and ride to the border. It’s just as well I’d replenished my water, because it turned out it was all downhill on the way there, which meant… well, what’s a few hundred extra metres of climbing anyway?