Tuesday, October 10, 2023

A bit more history, a bit more of Normandy.



Throw a stone in any direction in Normandy, and you’ll likely hit either a castle, a quaint little town, a lovely landscape or a bit of history, or more likely, as we did today, all of them at the same time….

 This morning we started to sail back up the Seine toward Paris.  It was nice to just relax and enjoy the views.  


The top deck of the boat has a walking track - it’s short - takes about 10 laps to do one mile, so it’s a bit like a treadmill - which I hate and find 

boring -  but, with the sun rising, the ever changing views, and surrounded by herons, cormorants, swans and other birds, it's actually very pleasant, and I did an hour walk hardly noticing the time.








We went back up the lock that we had passed on the way down.  Locks are just cool!  (We went up 18 feet).  








 We docked during lunch at the village of Les Andelys, or to be precise, at Petit Andelys (Grand Andelys is further inland, and not as pretty because it was destroyed during WWII.

  Petit Andelys was not and thus retains its Middle Ages timbered houses (see picture at top of blog). It is build at the bottom of the white limestone and flint cliffs, which were sparkling in today’s sunshine.  






  It of course has a castle on top of the cliffs, with an interesting history: 


 It was built by Richard Lion Heart, as an attempt to keep the French king from taking over Normandy - you’ll remember from previous lectures that William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, had previously taken over England, thus becoming King of England, although he at the same time was a vassal of the King of France.  Well, that just did not work out and many wars followed.  Anyhow -Back to Richard -

 He built this big thing on top of the cliff, but made the strategic mistake of putting windows in the chapel, and the French troops came that way.  Also, even though there was a big trench around the main castle, there was no draw bridge, just steps (because he thought they could not make it up that way).  As so the castle was taken over. (These are not the original steps.

  

It was not however destroyed by that war, or any other war:  During the reign of Louis XIV, the villagers asked for permission to use the castle as a quarry- what with all these already nicely chiseled stones- and he said OK.  So they just took a lot of it apart.

 The hills on which it is built are gorgeous, so I continued on to the top, and through the forest.  It was wonderful  I keep talking about the weather - EVERYBODY is talking about the weather.  All of our guides keep telling us that weather like this just does not happen in Normandy in October - in fact it’s supposed to start raining the day we leave……  we have been extremely lucky.  It was so nice to still see so many beautiful flowers.  In fact, I’ve been remiss in not posting enough pictures of flowers - so here are a lot of them from today’s walk.

Here are a couple more pictures of the castle and the view from the top.


 

We’ve had lunch and dinner on the deck everyday.  I just don’t understand why anyone would have meals in the main restaurant (it’s lovely, but outside has been SOOOOOOO nice!).  We’ve met nice people there too.  


Some flowers from today’s walk.  


















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