Where's Bertie? He's back at the Aire in Le Tréport.
Weather: Morning showery (some prolonged and heavy), afternoon mainly dry. A high of 13 degrees.
The rain was hammering down as we readied ourselves for a look around Eu this morning. Earlier in this trip we would have stayed another night at the Aire and deferred our sight-seeing until it was a bit drier, but we're now running out of time, and having taken the trouble to go to Eu, we were jolly well going to see it.
Happily our waterproofs did their job to perfection: the rain stopped as we stepped out of Bertie and didn't start again until we were back.
Our verdict on Eu is that it's an interesting place to stroll around for an hour or two, with the first striking landmark when approaching from the direction of the Aire being the huge church:
It's dedicated to an Archbishop of Dublin, Laurence O'Toole. William the Conquerer married his cousin Mathilda there, you know.
There's also a chateau, in front of which a Christmas market is just being set up, looking like the same set of 'garden sheds' and marquees as we saw at Mers-les-Bains last weekend:
The back of the chateau, taken from the end of its garden, thus avoiding the clutter of the Christmas market at the front.
And generally there are just a lot of narrow streets lined with old houses:
Much wonkiness in the old timber framed buildings.
The one disappointment was our failure to buy cakes, due to one patisserie not having the best examples of the particular ones we wanted, and the other being closed. We didn't feel inclined to walk all the way back over to the other side of town to one of the outlets there.
Back at Bertie we weighed up the options as to where to go next. We already knew our next destination, but we also had to take into account The Water Issue. That is, we hadn't filled up when we left Le Tréport yesterday, as we knew water was included in the price of the Aire at Eu - but then we found we were unable to access it due to not having the right connector(/the absence of a sensible tap). There's a danger, being the end of November, that the supply will be turned off at our next stop, and we have no firm plan as to what we're doing the next night, so the easiest option seemed to be to backtrack the 4km to Le Tréport, and once here we thought we may as well stay the night.
Predictably (givng the morning's failure), this afternoon's objective was cake. Alas, we found the patisserie closed (their non-stop hours being modified by a note taped to the window saying they would re-open at 3pm) and it being about a mile each way from where Bertie is parked, we filled the waiting time by some semi-aimless wandering. That led us to discover things we had previously missed, like some information signs about historical points of interest, and a bit of art work:
The most surprising incident of the day was the sighting, at close quarters of three coypu (thanks to Mick for recognising what they were). On the body of water opposite the Aire lives a colony of ducks. They sit there all quiet and serene, until the moment they see a person passing by, whereupon they set up a frenzy of quacking, and make their way at full speed over to the slip way. They are obviously used to being fed (every time we've been on the road outside, we've walked over to the far pavement just to amuse ourselves with their Pavlovian reaction). As we passed for the final time today, their quacking had (to their little minds) paid off, and someone was there doling out bread, which had attracted not just the birds but also the coypu. The ducks got in the way, so the only snap I managed to get was at a distance, on full zoom:
There is a coypu in this snap, honest.
And after all that, they turned out to be rather disappointing.
Weather: Morning showery (some prolonged and heavy), afternoon mainly dry. A high of 13 degrees.
The rain was hammering down as we readied ourselves for a look around Eu this morning. Earlier in this trip we would have stayed another night at the Aire and deferred our sight-seeing until it was a bit drier, but we're now running out of time, and having taken the trouble to go to Eu, we were jolly well going to see it.
Happily our waterproofs did their job to perfection: the rain stopped as we stepped out of Bertie and didn't start again until we were back.
Our verdict on Eu is that it's an interesting place to stroll around for an hour or two, with the first striking landmark when approaching from the direction of the Aire being the huge church:
It's dedicated to an Archbishop of Dublin, Laurence O'Toole. William the Conquerer married his cousin Mathilda there, you know.
There's also a chateau, in front of which a Christmas market is just being set up, looking like the same set of 'garden sheds' and marquees as we saw at Mers-les-Bains last weekend:
The back of the chateau, taken from the end of its garden, thus avoiding the clutter of the Christmas market at the front.
And generally there are just a lot of narrow streets lined with old houses:
Much wonkiness in the old timber framed buildings.
The one disappointment was our failure to buy cakes, due to one patisserie not having the best examples of the particular ones we wanted, and the other being closed. We didn't feel inclined to walk all the way back over to the other side of town to one of the outlets there.
Back at Bertie we weighed up the options as to where to go next. We already knew our next destination, but we also had to take into account The Water Issue. That is, we hadn't filled up when we left Le Tréport yesterday, as we knew water was included in the price of the Aire at Eu - but then we found we were unable to access it due to not having the right connector(/the absence of a sensible tap). There's a danger, being the end of November, that the supply will be turned off at our next stop, and we have no firm plan as to what we're doing the next night, so the easiest option seemed to be to backtrack the 4km to Le Tréport, and once here we thought we may as well stay the night.
Predictably (givng the morning's failure), this afternoon's objective was cake. Alas, we found the patisserie closed (their non-stop hours being modified by a note taped to the window saying they would re-open at 3pm) and it being about a mile each way from where Bertie is parked, we filled the waiting time by some semi-aimless wandering. That led us to discover things we had previously missed, like some information signs about historical points of interest, and a bit of art work:
The most surprising incident of the day was the sighting, at close quarters of three coypu (thanks to Mick for recognising what they were). On the body of water opposite the Aire lives a colony of ducks. They sit there all quiet and serene, until the moment they see a person passing by, whereupon they set up a frenzy of quacking, and make their way at full speed over to the slip way. They are obviously used to being fed (every time we've been on the road outside, we've walked over to the far pavement just to amuse ourselves with their Pavlovian reaction). As we passed for the final time today, their quacking had (to their little minds) paid off, and someone was there doling out bread, which had attracted not just the birds but also the coypu. The ducks got in the way, so the only snap I managed to get was at a distance, on full zoom:
There is a coypu in this snap, honest.
And after all that, they turned out to be rather disappointing.
Wow, that chateau is gorgeous. And the murals lovely. I didn't realize it was so difficult to find water. Can you buy bottled water in an emergency, and not have a wash.
ReplyDeleteI thought the water question merited a post of its own, so see the post after this one.
DeleteHere in Louisiana, coypu are common in the southern part of the state - maybe roughly within 100 miles of the Gulf of Mexico - but they are called "nutria"! LDC
ReplyDelete