This map shows our journey up till today, the 24th of September. We are now in Pont-Ste-Maxence, just south of Compiègne. This is more or less halfway our destination Auxerre.

Deux pastis s’il vous plait.

St-Quentin was one of the towns in the front line during The Great War. A lot of buildings still show traces of the devastating violence, like these bullet holes in the town hall. Of all buildings in St-Quentin 80% were destroyed.

Art Deco was in vogue when rebuilding St-Quentin. And it shows! It’s a paradise for both Art Deco and architecture lovers.

Stopover at Chauny, next to “Trijntje” (Leiderdorp, 1904), the winner of the best kept historical boat at the recent DBA-gathering in Paris.

One of the differences between England and France obviously is the absence of Eddy Stobard lorries……… No counting anymore!

The town of Compiègne and surroundings contain a lot of history. There were Charles the Bold, Joan of Arc, Charles V, Louis XV, Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon I and III. We visited the railway carriage in the nearby forest, in which the armistice of 1918 was dictated to the Germans by the French, personified by Maréchal Foch, their commander in chief. In 1940 it was the other way around; Hitler in person came to France and used the same carriage to humiliate the French in return. The carriage was destroyed by the Germans, so this one is a copy. The adjacent museum showed the endless horrors of The Great War extensively.

In 1940 this impressive Great War-monument was stripped of it’s fallen eagle and covered in swastika printed cloths by the Germans.

Pont-Ste-Maxence, the mooring spot where this page was created.