On the way. Between Givet and Avallon.

We drive through a spring landscape and are jubilantly accompanied by fresh willow leaves, brown sticky and fragrant poplar buds, yellow dandelion meadows and sharp white flowers. The motorhomist is still herbalist. Along the Meuse Valley to France (Givet, Revin..) but eventually we spend the night in Nismes. The plant paradise in the Viroinval. In a place known to us with lots of plants in the rocks around us, only we are not going to visit them all tonight. I walk up at dusk through the ruins of the old church, a small piece of GR with a beautiful view over Nismes. The spring flora that we saw plenty along the way, is also present here. White-flowering forest anemones, some flowering celandine, celandine, pinkstar flower now at its best, but there is much more special limestone flora on the tennes, wild thyme, gamander, sunnies and orchids. Remarkable is the ressurgence, the place where l'eau noire emerges from the rocks and forms a stream of several meters wide. Unfortunately, this place is fully built with some unclear houses and two garage boxes. It remains hard to understand why such beautiful places are ruined with ugly structures.

Saturday 24 April French Ardennes

Appointments in Le Hardoye and Besmont, visiting houses in the French Ardennes. We sleep under the church tower of Liart, not immediately recommended but we had to be nearby and church squares are mostly flat, not unnice places to stay overnight. Only the local youth with their rituals and the bells of Rome with other rituals sometimes disturb the peace. In this case, the locals had a party in the hall nearby and that lasted until about 4.15 in the morning. So...

Sunday, April 25th

After another appointment in Le Cerleau, we drive around 11 o'clock to the South, quietly along N and D roads via Chalons and Champagne to Troyes. Or more around Troyes.
We're having a picnic just before Arcy and Aube. In Arcy we regularly stop at the Aube, a nice spot where the municipality had sown a kind of arable berm last year, it was full of cornflowers, poppies and bolderik. Now we just drove by, it was also fair and market, that may be nice, but now was not the time to stop

We drive past Signy, Rethel, Pauvres, Suippes to name but a few curious names. More interesting things get past Troyes, we take the D444 and want to reach Avallon as an end point for today. Driving through the forest of Amont first, stopping for a while, photographing just dandelions and small periwinkle (should I do that here in the Fôret d'Amont?)

Some curious sculpted stones guard the entrance to the forest. The village further is Chaource, it looks cleaner and more beautiful here than in the French Ardennes of the previous days, no stock of dilapidated agricultural machinery on the yard, no chaos of bottle-like buildings, and even a decent looting spot for motorhomes, nice village to ever visit again. come. It may have something to do with a little more wealth, we are approaching the Burgundy region. The following villages such as Cussangy and Vallièrest are composed of farmhouses with an inner courtyard, which stand right along the road. So the front door hangs on the courtyard. It reminds me a bit of my native village Hoegaarden. Nice and also some youth sentiment.