Day 92 – to Bertrix, Belgium

A good reason to be in Ban-de-Sapt is to visit the Fontenelle Cemetery which contains the bodies of 1384 who were killed in the Great War.

French battalions set up camp on the hill, which is at 600 metres altitude and has a wide grassy plateau, in September 1914 – the Vosges was one of the first French Departments to experience combat in August of that year.

In June 1915 German troops took advantage of large part of the French army called to Alsace by attacking the Fontenelle hill, or hill 627 as it came to be known as. But the French counterattacked during a summer of immense loss to both sides, and it was held.

The hill was ravaged due to the artillery. Few trees were left to provide any shelter from bombardment, so the French built cave shelters, 5 of which remain and are maintained as memorials.

Some of the trenches now form a kilometre long circular path, accessible to wheelchairs, around the cemetery.

The other, and longer, path I took, was the Sentier Des Hameaux Morts Pour La France, which takes in several hamlets, chiefly of two farm communities that were lost during those two summers. The farms, the Colin and Maurice families, were taken over and set up as military hospitals. The land was so devastated that the surrounding forest took fifty years to grow again.

Though at the time the dead were buried close to where they fell, many of them near to the two farms, in 1920 they were all exhumed and moved to their current site.

This morning when I visited I was the only person there, with the hill shrouded in low cloud and mist. In such conditions it was an especially poignant visit, and one I can highly recommend. The 8 kilometre path Roja and I took is impeccably maintained so now that its natural environment has returned, it makes for an unforgettable and evocative experience – that such a place could have seen such horrors.

I mentioned yesterday that I always enjoy time in the Vosges. On this occasion it’s been too brief. It was a great stopover last night at the Gardens, just a couple of kilometres away.

I’m trying to restrict driving to about 3 hours a day on this return section, so today headed north through Nancy and Metz into Belgium and the Ardennes. Again, just a day’s visit here, hopefully to find a bar with a good Belgian beer, and a forest hike tomorrow.

It’s still early in the season, so on a Tuesday quite a few bars and restaurants are closed, along with Mondays. My first call was at the town of Herbeumont, but the one bar open didn’t look very welcoming, so I moved on towards Treignes, an hour away, and where I had stayed and enjoyed their five museums, most famous the railway, and a good pub, a couple of years ago.

It’s never far to go to find a good bar in this part of Belgium though, and twenty minutes on, at Bertrix, there looked like a few. I parked up at the sports complex and went to investigate. And indeed it delivered.

The glass with the stands, to the left of the Kwak bulb glasses with stands, are for La Corne beer, a 10% blonde.