The European Escape - Part 1 : Anthea & Rik escape to the East.

PART 2 / PART 3 / PART 4 / PART  5

Anthea and Rik Finally get round to having a real holiday, Well, almost! - Their chosen destinations? Varmaga and Uricani - Romania. Anthea has never been to the land of "Dracula, Gold mines and the world's nicest Cheese" so for her at least, everything is new.

Rik : Neither Anthea or I are any good on six hours sleep a night. So we relied on coffee and woke up properly on the Dover - Dunkirk ferry . (Before that it's all a bit hazy). A fantastic travelling day saw us swiftly on the way to Reims in France in relatively un-eventful fashion. Alright - that's not true. In the first French service station I was worryingly followed into the gents by four teenage girls who refused to believe my insistance that I wasn't Hugh Grant and refused to let me use the facilities in peace until they had my autograph. In complete desperation I signed and ran for a cubicle. Sorry Mr Grant. It was urgent!

Anthea : With Rik back on board, and fuming we moved onto more minor roads with astonishing Van Gogh colours and rolling hills and woodland. Hidden villages are given away here by their church spires. We paused in the beautiful village of Boucilly to investigate it's church and then drove through the wonderfully half timbered but near derelict village of Arcon.

Anthea on the Ferry and at Boucilly Church.

With evocative sounds and smells all around us we continued on tiny roads into Reims. We found a hotel five hundred yards from the Cathedral and snored at the first opportunity.

Hotel Views: Riems rooftops

Rik :  So once again the trial of getting up. But we made it into the Cathedral ahead of the tours, at which point I got all artistic and photograhic.

  Anthea :  Reims Cathederal is beautiful. Cool and spacious with glorius hot and cold colours in glass. The East window is by Chagall and echoes the original lost in a fire in 1900's. The simple restoration done since has kept the feel of the old building wonderfully. Not too many people and Rik wrote a poem.

Reims Cathederal

MOMENTS LAST JUST SECONDS THEN ARE GONE

The Priest by the alter steps eyes the young man,

Two days of beard, three quarter shorts and headphones.

The Priest disaproves, it is written on his face.

The young man is done here. He turns,

Shabby deck deck shoes move silent in the vast trancept.

An old man and a child shuffle to take his place.

The old one makes to kneel.

The child goes to hold his stick,

Can do no more, she is too small.

The old man sways,

Every line shows this is what he came for.

He is denied.

The child takes his hand, not understanding sadness.

The watching Priest makes to move,

But a pair of deck shoes have stepped up,

No words, a smile and strong caring hands

Then steps away that the old one can have peace,

Still close enough to be here when he needs to stand.

The child smiles.

"And then you will meet the Angels."

The priest, his lesson learned, crosses himself and backs away.

- - -

To prove we are tourists today we bought far too many postcards!

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