Day 86 Froncles to Roocourt La Cote

All this shilly-shallying around Chaumont has caused some confusion in our places of residence. The Janet leg position has found us just a little at odds with our places of accommodation. We are chez nous at Chaumont, but not yet in Chaumont in the balinade department. The last day or two, tomorrow and Sunday will be a real benefit for SNCF and should get us back to where we would have been if we had remained sound in all eight limbs. We have turned into a spider, it would appear.

So, having added to the confusion in a feeble attempt to put all that to rest and from a strolling point of view, we set off strolling this morning from Froncles, having arrived there from Chaumont by SNCF ter  bus.

We have become very fond of this part of France, Haute Marne, and its little villages. We would very much like to come back and explore all of the stuff which we have had to miss out because we are without a wheeled and motorised conveyance.

Back at the canal once more we feel at home and ready to stroll. How we will manage after Langres, when we have left the canal I don’t know. It has been very interesting to see how the major route for commerce we saw at the beginning is now largely unused, except by a few pleasure craft. The commercial canal turned away from us and towards the Rhine at Vitry-le-Francois. So we have seen no commercial traffic at all for the last few days. All the locks are beautifully maintained with the paths running along them being fabulous cycle ways.

 

 

We are getting closer and closer to the source of the Marne now and the broad valley and open spaces we found at the start of this section of the stroll is beginning to narrow and to close in on us.

On rounding a bend in the canal we could see a fabulous line of trees reflected in the canal.

The weather today has been cool and sunny, Janet’s leg has been more comfortable and we didn’t make any navigational errors so we got to Roocourt in plenty of time to get the bus back to Chaumont.

 

Roocoourt is very pretty and on a hill. We had a good old stroll from one end to the other. We started at the bottom and strolled to the top where the houses petered out into farmland. We had hoped to find a bus stop during our stroll in order to give us confidence that a bus would make an appearance and that, by standing in the proper place, we would be able to sit on the bus and be delivered to our destination. Some of the village we have passed through are hives of activity, Roocourt was not one of these busy places. Asking for directions is jolly difficult when there are no people. At the end of the village, and our tether, a teenage boy was opening the garage door for his father to park the car. He told us that the bus stop was at the other end of the village. We just had not spotted the perisher on the way up.

If all goes well we will be officially in Chaumont tomorrow ready for the next leg of the stroll, LANGRES.

If anyone spots any typos please let me know. I type this stuff fairly quickly at the end of the day and, as I am lazy, directly onto the the server rather than into something which will hold my hand.