Ambling in Amiens

A new world was opening up to us.  Of course, it had always been there, all around us, every day, but travelling in Eileen really had made that phrase mean something to us.

Around 2pm on Wednesday 10 April we left Calais and struck out south easterly to Amiens, stopping only to fill up Eileen with diesel and GPL.  The weather was very still and quite misty all the way there and around 5:30pm as we parked up in the Parc Le Cygnes, the rain started.  Ah, memories of last year’s weather….!  We went to sleep, our first night back in Eileen, hoping the sun might come out tomorrow.

We didn’t wake up to sun shining in through the windows, what we did wake up to was the strange sensation of Eileen being rocked by strong gusts of wind.  Still that’s always better than rain in my book.  Neither of us felt like rushing anything, especially after a rather tepid morning shower in a slightly chilly shower block.  So, late in the morning, we ambled out to the bus stop and just missed the half-hourly bus into the city centre; never mind there’s always another one. We found the Notre-Dame cathedral, via a rather circuitous route, with a bit of window shopping en route.

The cathedral is huge, the largest in France and apparently it could enclose the Notre-Dame in Paris twice. We’re not sure if it was because of the soaring ceilings and wide nave, but it was freezing inside; we both had dragon’s breath and had to go outside to warm up!

We roamed through to the Saint Leu district of Amiens, an area of small colourful houses lining the canal waterfronts. We warmed up with a huge pizza lunch, not sure why we chose Italian for our first lunch in France..? Then with light rain starting up again, we walked through to the house of the writer Jules Verne, an interesting building with a rather whacky tower on top and then decided to find the nearest bus stop and head back to the campsite.