One Day in Champagne

The sleep was poor, but it was worth it, I thought. I had gotten into the backpackers at Verdun late last night, having driven with my friend Jim from Belgium stopping at half the famous battle sites along the way. This was the whole point of the trip, so I was not fussed by the fatigue. I joined Leonard, the New Zealander we’d bumped into who I shared the room with down for breakfast and we swapped stories. He told me how he was following the All Blacks on their rugby tour and his experiences flying Aeroflot into Siberia, all littered with enough profanity to make Chopper Read blush. I told him about life in London and the where to get the best deep fried mars bar in Glasgow. It was a short breakfast as I knew time was a factor. Besides, we were the only ones there by the looks of it. I had to get going if I was going to see Verdun cemetery and then get on my way to Rheims. I loaded up my panniers, bid my antipodean meal sharer adieu and rode off. The rode up to the Ossuary is lined with memorials - those for the Maginot line, the men who defended the fortresses, the nurses, and many more. The lush green forest and bright sunshine seemed in stark contrast to the secrets this land held. The men whose bodies were never found, the land still marked by shell craters and trenches, preserved still 90 years after guns fell silent. The giant bullet shaped memorial at Douamont stood guard over thousands of graves. I'd never seen a cemetery this size. And this was maybe one hundredth of all those who fell in this area of the front. Inside, the red tinted windows painted the giant hall a sanguine red, leaving one in awe of a country whose anthem sings of blood watering their fields as it certainly did here. I could have stayed the whole day, but this was just one of the sights I wanted to see. I promised to return and rode off the way I came, back through the town and down la voie sacree. I rode eastwards on through those rolling fields, past Chalons where the Romans had finally turned back Attila, past the burgundy and burnt saffron hillsides with their vines ripe for harvest, past the giant piles of onion through strong headwinds that felt like I was riding through molasses. As I crested the hills I could make out the cathedral spires and the town of Reims ahead. The late afternoon sun slowly sank as I made my way past the Moet & Chandon vineyards and into the town where Joan of Arc had brought the Dauphin to be crowned and brought the Hundred Years War back from the brink. As the US election results unfolded I looked back on an amazing day and wondered what tomorrow might bring.