October 3 - Château Gaillard and Lyons-la-Forét

Overnight we crossed the English Channel and sailed up the Seine River to the city of Rouen, which is approximately 65 miles inland.  The river is still navigable for ships like ours and so Rouen also happens to be France’s sixth largest port.  Among other things Rouen is famous for being the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and it’s also the home of the beautiful cathedral whose façade Claude Monet painted 30 times in different light.

Last night I was exhausted and we had to set our clocks forward one hour.  Then this morning my tour was scheduled to meet on the dock at 8:30 AM.  When I awoke it was incredibly foggy outside and because of the fog we arrived in Rouen one hour late. I would have really enjoyed having that extra hour to sleep.

Finally we were on our way for our tour to Château Gaillard, a ruined castle built by Richard the Lionhearted,  English king and Duke of Normandy,  in 1196 on a hill overlooking the Seine.  Normandy was fought over for hundreds of years by the French and English and Richard was worried about incursions by the former.  He had a chain pulled across the river to stop intruders.  After the end of the Hundred Years War a French king had the castle, which was largely in ruins already, destroyed.  All that remains now are remnants of the three concentric walls, the dry moat and the castle keep.  Below at the river’s edge is a little town called Les Andelys.  While it’s quite pretty, most of the buildings are fairly modern because during WWII it was home to an ammunition factory so it was heavily bombed.

                                        Château Gaillard (not much to see really)

                                         The misty Seine below the castle

                             A very pretty rose window in the church in Les Andelys which I saw as we passed by

The fog had lifted some and there were just wisps around which made the ruins look a little mysterious. After having a look around we boarded our bus for our next stop.  We drove through beautiful farmland and beech forests to the little village of Lyons-la-Forét.  The area we drove through is eastern Normandy and is primarily agricultural.  They grow maize, wheat and sugar beets and raise cattle among other things. Lyons-la-Forét is considered one of the most beautiful villages in France because it is largely intact as it has been for centuries.  Many of the buildings are half-timbered and stone.  Some had thatched roofs.  On most of those there were iris planted in the thatch.  Our guide told us that iris and lily plants are symbols of the Virgin Mary and so they are planted on the roofs in order for that home to be under Mary’s protection.The structures are long and not too wide.  They were built that way because their width was limited by the size of the timbers being used to construct them. Parts of the streets are still cobbled. In many of the tiny front yards along the streets there were lovely flower gardens with things still in bloom.

                                        Some photos of the streets of Lyons-la-Forét

In a little area of the village not large enough tp be called a square, there is a memorial to soldiers from the village who died in WWII.  Even more interesting was attribute to a woman of the village Huguette Verhague who worked with the Resistance during the war and saved a number of Allied airmen shot down.  I’m attaching a link here to an account of her exploits I found on the internet. She must have been a truly remarkable and courageous woman.

http://102ceylonsquadronassociation.org/Story%20of%20Huguette%20Verhague%20by%20Olek%20Brezski.pdf

We had a walkabout to have a closer look at the houses, many of which had interesting doorknockers.  They reminded me of a visit we made years ago to Orvieto, Italy, where many homes had sometimes fantastical knockers.  The village looked kind of sleepy and I asked our guide Christian why.  He said that on Mondays many things are closed in France.  Later on back aboard I heard some people talking about their time in Rouen and they said even in that much larger city, many places were closed.

There was a patisserie/boulangerie open and I and most of my fellow travelers decided to buy something.  There are not many things more wonderful than stepping into a French bakery and having the aroma of freshly baked bread and pastries assail your nose.  One couple bought two loaves of bread. (I wondered about that because they do feed us very well on the ship.)  I bought an almond pastry and a bottle of locally made cider.  In Normandy they actually don’t produce as much wine as many parts of France, but they are famous for their Calvados, an apple brandy, and cider.

After a nice interlude it was time to get back on the bus and head home to our ship in Rouen.  It was pretty chilly outside and since many things were closed I stayed aboard.  I had heard that even the cathedral was closed for some kind of renovations.  That was too bad for anyone had hadn’t been here before.  I had thought about dining ashore tonight since we are staying here overnight.  Unfortunately when I looked online most of the restaurants I saw that sounded interesting were closed on Mondays.

I had declined my dinner invitation with a couple of the entertainers and instead when I went to the restaurant I was invited to join a lovely couple, Barry and Victoria from Sussex, England.  We had a delightful evening talking about all sorts of things and in fact we were close to the last people to leave the dining room.  You meet some of the nicest and most interesting people on ships.

Well, that’s all for now.  It was another good day.