Bonjour from France

So we are now in Nancy in France at a really lovely campsite beside the river, called Les Boucles de la Mouselle (which I believe means Buckles on the Mouselle (the name of the river) - we have decided to stay here for 5 nights so here's what we have been up to so far….

On our first day we drove an hour and a quarter to Verdun which is a village devastated by a battle in WW1, it's less well known than the Somme, etc but the museum was incredible to go round and as always, the numbers are astounding when they take about the war. Verdun was a strategic gain for the Germans and in the battle, which lasted 300 days there were approx. 300,000 people killed - staggeringly, 60 million shells were dropped in the area. Many of the villages are still, over 100 years later, declared 'zone rouge' because they are 100% uninhabitable as the shells have still not been able to be cleared - they estimate 300 years before it will be fully cleared and each year there is an Iron Harvest where local farmers help to clear areas. Isn't that astounding? The museum had a glass floor in one section and you could see all the shells partially buried.

Just up the road is an ossuary, it looks like a large church but it has 130,000 bones and skulls within it - we were reminded of a similar stupa we had seen in Cambodia at the killing fields.

On Thursday we hired bikes and thought we could cycle into Nancy, however it seemed there were many factors against us! Firstly, my bike only had 2 gears (of course, James soon fixed this for me) and then the route planned which started beautifully along the river, then turned into a bumpy, barely used track along a railway line, and when my constant whining finally reached James' ears, we turned onto the roads to find it was all uphill. We then relooked at the map and found that we still had an hour to cycle to reach Nancy and it was over 30 degrees so an executive joint decision was made to bail and cycle back - which still seemed to be a lot of uphill work!

Luckily the campsite has a pool and we were straight in there to cool off when we got back. That evening we took a bottle of wine and scrabble to the river side and had a lovely evening watching the sun drop, there is a chateau on the other side of the river so the setting felt very French and was topped off by a rare win by me, and excellent triple word score for 'hoopla'

On Friday we went into Nancy, firstly to the Musee de l'Ecole de Nancy which is basically a 2 storey house filled with art nouveau pieces, we weren't keen on the furniture but we loved the iron work and the lamps (bit Tiffany style, if you don't know already) we then walked to the Place Stanislas and we were amazed by how huge and stunning it was, I will upload some pictures - plenty of gilt work, great architecture and lots of lovely plant filled restaurants all around, typically (and rarely for me) we weren't hungry so had to pass on the Plat du Jours they were offering.

I then had a quick hour in the shopping mall to scoot around and get James some birthday presents, not too much tat for a change!

Saturday we walked into the nearest town, Liverdun, which is quite nice with cobbled streets, another chateau and a church and then we did the chores of food shopping and laundry - amazing we can combine the 2 as in the supermarket car park there is a self service washing machine :) although, as per the picture we do look like campsite gypsie with it hanging everywhere!!

We are moving into Switzerland on Monday and will be there 3 nights for James 50th so will blog again then x x

PS the new pics are in the original 'France' album from the first trip, at the bottom