Bonjour! After our dramas in Tain l’ Hermitage with the phone it was the next day and time once again to hit the road north. This time we would be staying in Central France in a medieval town called Langres (pronounced “longe”)
The drive up was pretty uneventful and the geography of this leg was quite boring only really being farmers fields as far as the eye could see either side of the motorway until we reached Langres itself.
Langres is a fully walled medieval town and actually one of the best preserved in France. Driving in you literally pass through the town gates and then if you stay here quite possibly your hotel would be on the ramparts of the wall. The place Clive booked us was just that.
After parking up, getting the gear out of the car we had a bit of a walk along the ramparts and learned a little of it’s history. Being an hour north of Dijon and located in a major crossroad area of France between Paris, Germany, the Alps and the start of the Low Countries it was always a fortified place.
Langres was like a lot of castle towns built on the ruins of an old Roman Fort, parts of which can still be seen there today. At its peak utility there would have been around 12000 troops stationed here.
Over many years the walls have been renovated and upgraded and the most recent one was in 1870 after France lost Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia soon to become Germany Langres was made one of the main frontline fortified towns of Western France
Now it’s interesting to learn but we only walked about a third of it being a bit late in the day when we got here. So we soon went into the centre for some food and drinks and kept it pretty chill before going back to the gaff to watch France vs Paraguay on the TV.
All in all was quite a nice day. For the next one and last full day in France we go north towards Calais and past the WW1 burial sites.
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