Our friend David came over from UK for a visit and arrived by train to join us in Amiens. He stayed for a week and we had a really good time sightseeing, eating and drinking. David also brought my new camera as "old faithful" died from overwork, so please indulge me while I get used to it.
One of the main sights to see in Amiens is the Cathedral. We took a wrong turn and arrived at the rear of the building. The architecture isn't quite as ornate as the front facade but we'd have missed the poppies otherwise
The new camera has an amazing zoom........
There were poppies all over the lawn and also bleeding from a window, a bit like the ones that had been at the Tower of London a couple of years ago.
but where the Engish ones were made from metal, these were made from recycled plastic bottles, painted blood red.
The front facade is very ornate with carved saints and angels, although on a much less grand scale than Reims cathedral that we visited last year.
Inside it was very differennt to Reims
There were far fewer statues, instead there were many of these painted, carved wooden friezes
some of which were quite gory
This was my favourite statue. It's the Crying Angel and was originally carved in 1635, although this is now a plaster replica. It became famous during the 1st World War as it was featured on postcards sent by the Allied soldiers back to their families
David was staying with us for a week so after Amiens we cruised down to Abbeville and then Sainte Valerie sur Somme, which is the closest we can get to the seaside. The weather was glorious and even though there was no room on the pontoon at Sainte Valerie we were made welcome by the French owner of a static converted peniche who gladly let us moor alongside. We only had time to stay for one night as David needed to be back in Abbeville to catch his train back to UK but we'll be back again next week as Sainte Valerie is a beautiful town and our grandchildren are coming to stay for a while. When we got back to Abbeville there was no available mooring so we breasted up with the 38m travelling theatre peniche Le Lapin Vert. We'd seen them several times over the previous couple of weeks, unfortunately usually taking up all the premium mooring places but that hadn't bothered us too much as we've got quite used to mooring in the wild. They were a really friendly bunch and told us (them in perfect English and us in pigeon French) that they were really struggling along the Somme as it's very twisty and narrow in places and quite often they were dragging along the bottom and travelling at only between 2 and 3 km per hour. The eclusiers had to alter the water levels in pounds to get them under bridges and raise the level in others to get them off the bottom. Next morning we awoke to very low water levels as the eclusiers had again needed to lower the level to let them go through the next lock and low bridge to turn round before heaing back the way they'd come.
Moorings in Abbeville and Sainte Valerie are supposed to be limited to 3 days, although we know that boats have been moored in both towns for much longer, so once David left us we headed back up river and spent the weekend in the middle of nowhere before returning to Abbeville this afternoon to stock up ready for the grandkids arriving on Tuesday.
If I don't blog for a while it's because it's "Granny Time" 😀 See you soon X
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