Leaving Masevaux, we traveled along a stupendous mountain road called the Route de Cretes (the Road of the Crests). This route was built as a strategic road during World War 1 to prevent the Germans from observing French troop movements. The entire route is 83 kms long and hugs the western side of the Vosges range, much of it through dense woodland. Every now and again, though, there are spectacular views out over Lorraine, especially from the tops of the mountain crests. Although it was a little hazy, we were lucky as this road is often shrouded in mist from end to end. The highest points of the mountains, in this area, are known as ‘ballons’, perhaps because their rounded tops resemble balloons, and the highest of them, The Grand Ballon, was on our route. When we stopped to admire the view and take a picture of the sign giving the height (1424 m), we were delighted to find a herd of chocolatey brown cattle sporting cow bells of different sizes. What a lovely sound as they moved around, grazing or shaking their heads.
Eventually we had to come down from the mountain tops and spent a night in a place with the extraordinary name of Xonrupt-Longemer beside a lake which was so still that it looked as if one could walk across it. It also had that ice-green tinge to it, so we didn’t try!
The town with the strange name is very close to Gerardmer, which suffered very badly in 1944. It was almost totally destroyed by the Germans and their ‘scorched earth’ policy, so we went along to see what had been saved and how they had recovered. All we found was a completely modern town and not even an attractive one at that, so we moved quickly on and picked up the Alsace Wine Route just south of Riquewihr. Now this is more like it!! I know we had said ‘No more mediaeval villages’, but if you could see them, you would know why we can’t resist them. This village is mostly 1500’s and is beautifully preserved. People actually live there and must surely curse the tourists who clog up the roads with their cars, and the pavements with their slow ambling, but perhaps they just accept it.
We couldn’t be on a wine route and not taste some wine, which in Alsace would have to be white, although they do produce some red too. And having tasted, we just had to buy some, of course. We also went into a Christmas Shop, which was quite magical. Every item on display had something to do with Christmas and the shop was a mass of winking, twinkling lights, silvery decorations twisting slowly in the air currents and sparkling tinsel. There were tree decorations by the hundred, made out of paper, plastic, wood, glass and crystal; Santa Claus’ in a dozen different shapes, sizes and materials; tinsel in every imaginable colour (and a few you wouldn’t dream of), and every thickness from pencil thin to as thick as a feather boa. And I haven’t even started on the table decorations – mats, serviettes, table cloths, crockery and cutlery and glasses! I have never seen anything like it and could have spent hours in there. In fact I couldn’t even come away with a photograph as it wasn’t allowed.
Dragging ourselves away at last, we drove on a little way and stopped for the night at the next village, Ribeauville. To our delight, the caravan park has a resident European Stork, which (dare I say this) stalks around the camp each evening inspecting some of the campers’ supper tables, hoping for a hand-out.
Ribeauville is yet another pretty village with masses of flowers. If that is beginning to sound blasé, it isn’t meant to, it just means that we are running out of superlatives. We have come to the conclusion that the wonderful displays of flowers are a massive team effort, with every house owner religiously picking off dead heads and leaves as soon as they appear, in their own flower-boxes and those around town. How else could they possibly keep everything looking so perfect. While in Ribeauville we had lunch at a small restaurant and what better item to choose off the menu that Quiche Lorraine and a French Salad!
Continuing along the wine route, we passed Otschwiller, Schenwiller, Blienschwiller, Goxwiller, Bernardswiller and Rosenwiller, but the only one we would have liked to stop in was Itterswiller. France has a system of grading participating villages according to their floral displays, Known as the Ville Fleuri grading, inspectors award stars which are then displayed at the entrance to the village with great pride. Most of the villages we have visited so far have been three-star, but Itterswiller is the only five-star village we have come across and we were totally unprepared for the sight that greeted us as we entered the town. It’s hard to make this little place sound so much better than what we have already seen, but it definitely was. The abundance of flower-boxes; the brilliance of the colours, the variety of blooms all contributed to the overall effect, and the finishing touch was creepers which had been trained along wires strung high above the road. If we were impressed, so were several hundred other people and there was no space to squeeze a large van into until we were well out of town again, and even then we couldn’t stop as the road had no ‘shoulders’. We considered looking for a place in which to turn and go back through the town again, but decided against it, and added it to the list for next time. And I didn’t even get a picture of it all from the van, I was just too amazed to think of picking up my camera!
We arrived at our selected campsite in Saverne, and for only the third time on this trip, took one look at it and drove away again. It was very crowded, but more than that, it just didn’t ‘feel’ right or nice. Instead we made for another site close by at Phalsbourg, where we found a beautiful site with only one other van there. We should have come to realize by now that if a campsite is ‘within easy walking distance’ of the nearest town, it is often very crowded and often has permanent campers i.e. itinerant workers which is unpleasant.
Our holiday is now rapidly coming to an end. We want to be back in Oss by the 3rd September, and ‘Jane’ tells us that we are about 470 kms away by the fastest route. ‘She’ has been a real boon and I doubt whether our travels would have been as pleasant without her. There would certainly have been far more tension about navigating through some of the bigger places we have been to. The down side is that she makes us terribly lazy about knowing where we are. Neels drives, watches the road and looks at the scenery while I gaze around at everything until we suddenly realize that we have no idea where we are on the map! But what a way to travel! Hassle-free and tension-free.
No comments:
Post a Comment