Where's Bertie? He's at an Aire in the town of Senones where it costs €8 per 24 hours, including electricity, water and tourist tax. Exact location: 48.393491, 6.974163
Weather: Rainy morning, brightening to a good amount of sunshine before coming in for rain again at teatime. 16-23 degrees.
I gave Mick a couple of options as to where we could go today, one being a free Aire 30 minutes from Obernai (where we spent last night) with walking routes immediately adjacent, the other being this place in an historic town with an abbey, an hour away. Preferring to do a longer journey and spend 2 nights in the same place, this was the option he took.
There was nearly a minor detour when I read about a museum just before we passed it, but the weather wasn't conducive to doing much at that point. It had rained on and off through the night, sometimes with thunder, and the morning was nothing short of grey, wet and miserable. The temperature was also dropping, until it reached 16 degrees. Putting this together with the poor MPG being achieved by Bertie, we deduced that we had been gradually ascending. Sure enough, we soon passed a sign telling us we were at seven hundred and something metres.
The rain had stopped and it was looking a little brighter by the time we arrived here. It's a nicely presented Aire here, with 16 spaces, only one of which was occupied. Quite a contrast to Obernai last night where vans just kept rolling in. I didn't do a count, but there must surely have been at least 50 there.
After lunch, a stroll around town was on the agenda, and it didn't take us long to realise that there wasn't a lot to it.
First impressions: an information sign so damaged and faded that it's now useless, next to some shabby, flaking shutters on the adjacent building.
Not far away we found the abbey, with a car boot sale taking place in the entrance yard, but with restoration works clearly affecting some of the buildings (and possibly also with it being a Sunday) nothing was obviously open for us to wander around the site. We did, however, learn that it ceased to be an abbey in the 1790s and became a textile factory, which it remained until the mid-1990s. It is now being restored as a historic site.
Continuing impressions. We couldn't get directly to where we were going next as the road (that goes through the building at the end of the street) was blocked. I didn't take a snap of substantial building 'under construction' around the corner that had clearly been abandoned long ago
Taking a long way around to the chateau, the impression of a tired and dying town continued, with lots of empty and unloved buildings/shops. Then we rounded the corner and came upon:
The chateau
The chateau doesn't look classically French-chateau-esque, probably because it dates from the period (1751-1793) when Senones was the capital of an independent state: the Principality of Salm-Salm. Three successive German princes reigned, and built the chateau - although they probably referred to it as a Schloss - which is what (per my general mental images of chateau vs schloss) it looks like.
Only a short foray was had into the gardens, before we headed back to Bertie.
So, the historic town was rather a disappointment, but we are still in the wooded hills of the Vosges region, and there seem to be a few landmarks in those hills, near to the town, that may be worth seeing, so at least one of us will venture out tomorrow for a look.
Bertie at the Aire. They built it, but people didn't come - or at least, not in any great number.
Weather: Rainy morning, brightening to a good amount of sunshine before coming in for rain again at teatime. 16-23 degrees.
I gave Mick a couple of options as to where we could go today, one being a free Aire 30 minutes from Obernai (where we spent last night) with walking routes immediately adjacent, the other being this place in an historic town with an abbey, an hour away. Preferring to do a longer journey and spend 2 nights in the same place, this was the option he took.
There was nearly a minor detour when I read about a museum just before we passed it, but the weather wasn't conducive to doing much at that point. It had rained on and off through the night, sometimes with thunder, and the morning was nothing short of grey, wet and miserable. The temperature was also dropping, until it reached 16 degrees. Putting this together with the poor MPG being achieved by Bertie, we deduced that we had been gradually ascending. Sure enough, we soon passed a sign telling us we were at seven hundred and something metres.
The rain had stopped and it was looking a little brighter by the time we arrived here. It's a nicely presented Aire here, with 16 spaces, only one of which was occupied. Quite a contrast to Obernai last night where vans just kept rolling in. I didn't do a count, but there must surely have been at least 50 there.
After lunch, a stroll around town was on the agenda, and it didn't take us long to realise that there wasn't a lot to it.
Not far away we found the abbey, with a car boot sale taking place in the entrance yard, but with restoration works clearly affecting some of the buildings (and possibly also with it being a Sunday) nothing was obviously open for us to wander around the site. We did, however, learn that it ceased to be an abbey in the 1790s and became a textile factory, which it remained until the mid-1990s. It is now being restored as a historic site.
Taking a long way around to the chateau, the impression of a tired and dying town continued, with lots of empty and unloved buildings/shops. Then we rounded the corner and came upon:
The chateau doesn't look classically French-chateau-esque, probably because it dates from the period (1751-1793) when Senones was the capital of an independent state: the Principality of Salm-Salm. Three successive German princes reigned, and built the chateau - although they probably referred to it as a Schloss - which is what (per my general mental images of chateau vs schloss) it looks like.
Only a short foray was had into the gardens, before we headed back to Bertie.
So, the historic town was rather a disappointment, but we are still in the wooded hills of the Vosges region, and there seem to be a few landmarks in those hills, near to the town, that may be worth seeing, so at least one of us will venture out tomorrow for a look.
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