Saturday 11th July – Week 4 – weird or dead today

Today being Saturday, we decided to go for a drive around some of the small local villages. Heading away, as is custom before breakfast, we headed for our first stop of Bar Sur Seine – about 40kms away.

Having parked the car in Bar Sur Seine, we rounded the corner onto the main street of town, to be met by this loud music coming, we thought, from a 4WD that had just parked on the footpath where we were about to walk. “A bit rude” we thought. Firstly parking on the footpath right in front of us, then having really loud music. As we walked past the 4WD (on the road, cos it was on the footpath), we realised that the loud music wasn't coming from the 4WD, but from a speaker mounted high on the wall of a nearby building. As we walked up the street, the music stayed at the same volume because every building seemed to have a speaker on it. After 100m of that street we rounded the corner to get the same thing on the next street. I have no idea what the music was for, or why it was being played, but the speakers all looked reasonably permanent, so it must be a local custom. Our objective was to get a coffee and some croissants for breakfast, preferably away from the noise. Having walked the length and breath of the town without being able to escape the music, we decided to stop at the only local cafe that had anybody in it. Everybody was inside scatching their Loto tickets, so we ordered our coffees and went and sat outside at the unoccuppied of the two tables that were out on the sidewalk.

We then realised that these tables were for smokers at that sidewalk dining was not really part of this town. Next two guys came out and asked if they could share our table. “of course” we said, and so they started to pour their beers at 10:30 in the morning. Shaking wildly, this was obviously the hair of the dog, and this was the weirdest town we had visited anywhere we had travelled. The music gave it a bit of “The Prisoner” feel, from the 60's tv series. Anyway, after that, we gulped down our coffee and headed out of town – it was the weird bit of the day.

From there, dead was the order of the day as we travelled through a series of towns, all of which were part of the L'Aube champagne route, and without exception they were all complete deserted. First off was Chaourse, which makes a cheese that is famous throughout the area. Having tried it, it is neither particularly tasty, particularly creamy or particularly textureful, but it is the local cheese and they are obviously very proud of it, so we have tried it and can now move on. From Chaourse we then visited Les Riceys and Essoyes. All these towns are on the Route Des Champagnes, but the volume of grapes was nothing like we had seen in the Alsace, or the Mosele. There were plenty of Champagne houses to visit along the way, but it's not really our thing, so sorry we didn't. Because all the towns were so quiet, we headed back to Troyes for a long lunch in the square, before returning to the campground and our last night camping.

After nearly 20 years of service, actually, make that 15 weeks of service over nearly 20 years, we have decided to leave our tent in the campground at Troyes, as it's quite heavy, is past is prime, doesn't enable us to stand up and would we'd probably have to get it cleaned by NZ Border Control. We left the tent, our two camp chairs and some other stuff at the camp restaurant. The campground owner was very happy to receive them and said that people were always showing up who had forgotten their tent, or had some mishap that would make them very happy to have our tent.