Sunday 25 August 2024
Nido's parked up on an aire in Nonsard-Lamarche by the north east shore of Lac de Madine. This man made lake - 20km in circumference - forms a vast outdoor leisure park offering water sports and other activities. It has the usual supervised swimming beach but plenty of places to get away from the busier areas. The aire's on a large area of grass amongst mature Balsam Poplar trees and we were able to just pick our place. It's €7 per night (no facilities) but if you need electric and toilets, there's an adjacent aire behind a barrier that charges €14 per night. As we serviced the van before leaving we're full of fresh water, this is ideal for us. We're staying for a couple of nights to enjoy swimming in the lake and have a day off travelling.
Leaving Raucourt-et-Flaba yesterday, we drove to the Le Clerc in Verdun to top up with food. Although a Saturday, the city roads were relatively quiet, so the drive in wasn't too stressful, plus of course Google Maps makes it much easier to find these places. Verdun is infamous for the terrible Battle of Verdun, which took place all around the town between February and December 1916. The German offensive took the French by surprise and in the opening days over 2 million artillery shells were fired. There followed several more offensives over the coming months involving several million soldiers and causing the death of 377,000 Frenchmen as well as over 14,000 American soldiers, plus of course the 330,000 German lives lost. The whole area is surrounded by the battlefields, many of which can be visited (along with their museums and memorials) and the countryside is peppered with far too many military cemeteries. The Ossaire de Douaumont holds the unidentified remains of over 130,000 French and German soldiers - enemies in life, united in death; a sobering thought in these uncertain times.
Our next park up was on an aire in the village of Dieue-Sur-Meuse, comprising ten parking spots on grass alongside the canal. After a grey and damp day before, the temperature had risen markedly, with thunderstorms forecast for the evening. So we were glad to find a spot we could reverse into, right next to the shade of a tree. As it was so hot - 34'C at its peak - we spent the afternoon reading in the shade. About 6pm we took Salty for a walk along the canal. The water was very clear so we could see the bottom, weeds and shoals of small fish. As we walked the skies darkened ahead of us and at the turn around point, we could see the lightning and hear the thunder as it approached. We only just made it back to the van before the dark skies rolled above us, the winds increased to gale force and the heavy rain started to lash down. It was very warm inside but we couldn't open the windows or skylights due to the storm. It continued on and off until about midnight, although I did manage to take Salty out for a short walk in between the rain showers. By then the temperature had cooled so we both enjoyed a pleasant mooch long the canal until the rain started again!
Overnight the temperature dropped by about 14'C and this morning's dog walk was pleasantly cool. I went in search of the boulangerie for our lunchtime baguette, which I eventually found on the main road. After breakfast we had a walk around the old village and returned to find we'd missed the lady from the adjacent Tourist Office who had come around to collect the €5 payment. She'd left an envelope of tourist leaflets under the windscreen wiper, so I used this to place our money - with a note of thanks - and posted it through the Tourist Office letterbox. In addition to the €5, there's a 0.55c per person Tourist Tax. This goes towards covering the costs of the commune providing services to tourists and we're very happy to pay it. There's been a lot of fuss about Wales introducing a similar tax, but living in a tourist area, we know the strain lots of visitors can place on the local community, so see no reason why they shouldn't contribute to the cost of providing services such as toilets, waste disposal etc.
The drive to Lac de Madine was only forty minutes, mostly along a minor road through a huge deciduous forest. We took our time, noting the trees and branches that came down in last night's storm had already been cut up and cleared away from the road that stretched for over 15km through the forest.
After picking our park up spot, we took a walk to check out the lake and the swimming areas. Salty had a cooling dip while we looked on enviously! The water felt warm to the touch so we banked this for later and walked around some of the lake before returning via a different inland track. Lunch, chilling out and reading followed before Cathy and I walked back to the lake for our own swim. The water was indeed quite warm and we enjoyed swimming and floating about for about 20 minutes. It was quite busy with families enjoying their day but this just added to the holiday atmosphere. Dinner was eaten outside. I had planned to cook outside on the Cadac BBQ, but when putting it together discovered that the grub screw that holds in the control spindle had fallen out and was missing. I've emailed Cadac to find out what size it is so I can buy a replacement.
As the sun was setting we walked around the village, watching the swallows diving about in the sky and nearly jumping out of our skins as we passed the church and the bells rang out! It's very quiet here now all the day visitors have left; the aire has also emptied out by at least half. I'm planning a bike ride tomorrow to visit a medieval village (with a café stop if I'm lucky), then hopefully we'll get another swim in the afternoon. At least it's cool tonight so we should sleep better than last night, when we had the fan blowing cooling air over us for most of the night.