We have travelled more than one hundred and eighty kilometres since leaving Lagarde four weeks ago. Today we accounted for twenty percent of those, and had a lunchtime stroll round Sedan to boot.
I suppose if we’d found Sedan to be in some way marvellous, we would have stayed for the night. It was interesting enough certainly, modern in a nicely designed fifties and sixties sense, although a bit unloved compared to the cheery little villages we have been in all week. The bread rolls we ate as we wandered were sensational, but there was nothing that compelled us to stay.
We have visited enough forts for this week and we have decided that one can overdo forts as tourist destinations, just as one can overdo cathedrals.
This is not to say the fort in Sedan would not have been interesting on another day though. It has walls that are twenty metres thick, having been strengthened progressively as improvements were made to armaments through its history. In retrospect, if one were to judge from the post-war age of the city outside the fort, either the effort that went into the walls was completely vindicated, or entirely wasted pending improvements to weapon accuracy. On further meaningless history, I have no idea who Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne was, but he was born there apparently and just a few kilometres down the river underway again, we passed the town where Napolean and Bismark negotiated a surrender treaty surprisingly to those of us who imagine Napoleon living a very long time ago, to pretty much coincide with the winding down of Port Arthur as a penal settlement.
Unsure of how to illustrate any of this information in a new and informative way, I photographed a cat, and wondered if it would be better served with a ginger sauce, or mushroom.
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