Places on the River Somme

Amiens is the main city in the Somme area and the capital of Picardie. Going back to paleolithic times, its recent history is of severe war damage especially in World War II. It was for the most part just behind the lines in World War I. Because of this there has been a great deal of rebuilding including France's first skyscraper, built in 1945, 100 metres high.

Amiens' own "Bondi Beach"- an Australian touch.

One building which escaped in both wars was the Notre Dame Cathedral. It is magnificent, more than twice as big as Notre Dame in Paris and full of light and beauty. At night during summer the front of the Cathedral is lit using special lasers to reproduce the original colours of the statues.

Amiens Cathedral. If you look carefully, you see more than 400 statues
The reproduction of the paint was superb

We enjoyed a visit to the house where Jules Verne lived for many years, writing his famous works. His books, maps, models and sketches helped us to know more about him. Amiens has a UNESCO listed very old but quite plain belfry, and they were just packing up their version of Bondi Beach which had been in one of the main squares for the summer. Actually, it stood above the old Roman Forum: we could look down through a window onto the excavations below the square.  

Amiens is also notable for its "Hortillonnages", 300 hectares of market garden plots, with 55 kms of canals running through them. These were created from peat workings in years gone by.

We left the boat for a day in Amiens to  travel to Paris to vote at the Australian Embassy and on to Auxerre to apply for a renewal of our visas. Everything went fairly smoothly, though we almost fell at the last hurdle when our last train of the day, our tenth, broke down one stop short of Amiens. Fortunately another train was coming through from Paris ten minutes later so we were able to transfer to that to get us home at last, sixteen hours after we set out.

There are several places along this river which have featured in history well before the wars of the 20th century. Parts of the Somme Valley have been occupied for 450,000 years and one particular spot has been set aside as a demonstration village on a place occupied for 100,000 years and as a military camp in 50BC. To balance the tales of war there is also a reproduction of housing from the Neanderthal, Bronze and Iron ages.

St Valery, where the Somme enters the sea, is an interesting seaside tourist town with a beach and a mediaeval city. William the Conqueror set out from St Valery to claim the English crown. Actually he set out twice but had to turn back he first time because he could not make it out of the bay because of adverse winds and tides.  

St Valery sur Somme

Another town which can claim significance beyond its present status is the small village of Picquigny. In 1475, Louis IX of France and Edward IV of England signed the treaty to end the Hundred Years War.

A little further along the Canal is the town of Long, made wealthy by the peat trade and therefore emboldened to establish a hydroelectric power plant which delivered 110 Volts of direct current to the people of the town from 1902 to 1965. Although now superseded, it is still in working order. This was one of the first towns in France to have electricity. Each household was allowed to turn on one bulb at a time. If you left one room, you had to turn out that light before turning on another one.

The pretty town of Long- seen from our mooring

Two other most enjoyable tourist jaunts were on trains: a steam train took us around the Bay of the Somme, blowing its whistle and puffing smoke. We particularly enjoyed the sight of the passengers helping the crew to turn it around by hand on its turntable at the end of the line.

Steam train, St Valery. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Turning the train, St Valery

The second train trip was on a 60cm gauge line which was used during World War 1 by both the French and German armies to bring supplies to the front lines. It was designed using tracks in sections rather like a model train set, to be slotted together quickly. After the war the tracks and trains were used to help in rebuilding the many devastated towns in the area and then were put to good use to carry sugar beets to the refinery, and sugar to market. This train used a switch- back zig- zag system to get up and down the slope so being as conductor and changing the  points at each zig or zag was quite a demanding job.

 Our narrow gauge train ride (some days, it is a steam train)

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave