Canal de l'Ourcq

[French Mystique Tours]

In my continuing explorations of the countryside near Paris I made today's destination the Canal de l'Ourcq. Not the part of the Canal de l'Ourcq in Paris but rather the starting point of the Canal de l'Ourcq, some 70 or 80 kilometers northeast of Paris. It was a beautiful, sunny fall day and I wanted to see some foliage and have an easy relaxing bike ride but there was also a little town I had wanted to visit, called La Ferté-Milon, which I knew was a charming little place that had an impressive castle ruin perched on a cliff overlooking the village.

My starting point was the town of Crouy-sur-Ourcq and my destination was La Ferté-Milon. Stepping off the train in Crouy-sur-Ourcq the medieval past is right in front of you.











The donjon in the above photos is known as the Donjon du Houssouy. It was built on top of an 11th century fortress and dates to the end of the 14th century. Built by the local seigneur, Robert de Sepoix, it was partially destroyed during the civil revolt known as the Fronde and again during a siege by the Duc de Lorraine in 1652. The village used to be much more lively in the past owing to its position on the adjacent Canal de l'Ourcq, which attracted commerce, merchants and artisans to the region, and was renowned for its market. The train station was on the outskirts of the village so I pedalled towards the town center to have a look around. Here's the local museum, housed in some sort of an old building.




Below is the local church, L'Eglise Saint-Cyr et Sainte-Juliette. It dates to the 12th century and was rebuilt in 1550. It was closed when I was here but it's supposed to have some old churchy things inside. You'll notice a rare gathering of a people in this photo, atypical of most of my tiny country village visits.

[French Mystique Tours]

I was planning on having lunch in a little restaurant in Crouy. A poster on a travel forum had mentioned having an excellent (and cheap) lunch in this place and said it was great home cooking. Unfortunately when I arrived in town I found that the restaurant had gone out of business. I knew from doing a bit of research that there was another nice little restaurant in town but that was closed because it was Monday.

I needed lunch and my only options for food were a little alimentation générale (mini-grocery store) and the boulangerie (baker). I opted for the boulangerie and stepped inside to see if they had sandwiches. They didn't have any prepared but these places usually make sandwiches if you ask for one. So I asked for a sandwich and the counter lady went to go make my sandwich. There was no one in the store when I arrived but as soon as I placed my order the entire village lined up behind me, as the line quickly extended outside the door. So there I am, the one jerk non-local who's holding up the rest of the village from getting their baguette because I had to ask for something special and the one employee in the store had to leave the counter to make it for me. Then when she came back I had to ask her to cut it in two for me, explaining I needed to put it in the saddle bag on my bike. ''Oh'' she said, ''I'll have to go wrap it up for you then so you don't get mayonaise all over everything''. This precipitated another trip to the back of the store since she was out of plastic wrap and she needed aluminum foil. It's usually obvious to locals that I'm not French when I start speaking as they detect my foreign accent. So now the whole village knows they've got some weird foreigner making unusual requests and generally interrupting their daily routine. I paid for my sandwich and let the village return to normal life.

After leaving the village center I passed by the train station again and just a short way down the road from there arrived at the canal.






I had no idea what kind of road might be running along the canal. Would it be paved? Would it be a cart path? Would it be just two dirt ruts? It was rough riding at first. The surface was hard packed dirt but there were a lot of rough stones, some packed into the ground some loose.








I was hoping the whole trail wasn't like this and after about 1km it turned into smooth, packed dirt with no stones and I was rolling nicely.









The Canal de l'Ourcq provides half of the 380,000m3 of water needed daily for cleaning the sewers, gutters and parks in Paris. Starting just over 100km northeast of Paris in the little village of Silly-la-Poterie it twists and meanders following the contours of its source river, The Ourcq, until it reaches the Marne River near Meaux where it leaves its source behind. It arrives in Paris at the Cité des Sciences in the 19th arrondissement where it splits in two with one branch heading north out of Paris as the Canal Saint-Denis and the other branch continuing into Paris, emptying into the Bassin de la Villette, continuing as the Canal Saint-Martin and ending as the Bassin de l'Arsenal where it reaches the Seine.

This whole system of canals was created through a series of decrees issued by Napoléon in 1802, although the project itself had been conceived in 1785. Specifically, he wanted to divert the Seine from the Bassin de l'Aresenal to the Bassin de la Villette where it joined with the two primary canals. The purpose was to provide drinking water and also to provide shipping channels to reduce the number of ships on the Seine in central Paris. The Seine was not damned at the time. The canal system was open for operation in 1822.

I was riding along the oldest part of the canal system. The first works on the canal were inspired by the need to provision Paris with grain, firewood and timber for construction taken from the Forest of Retz, property under the Ancient Régime of the Valois and Orléans families. The forest was also a huge domain for hunting and generated considerable revenue. Francis de Valois (later Francis I) reorganized the forest to suit his passion for hunting, creating a system of forest roads, building a château and capturing sources of water. According to legend (meaning possibly not true), in the early 16th century it was Leonardo da Vinci who installed a lock-chamber system on the Ourcq River, the first such attempt in France. After 1560 canalization of the river commenced with a new system of locks and reservoirs and throughout time further works were carried out.

If you want to learn more about the canal and can read French you can look at these two websites. The first is a history of the canal:

www.aufildelourcq.org/histoire/index.php

The next link is great even if you don't read French as it has lots of 19th and early 20th century photos taken along the canal. Scroll about halfway down the page and there is a humorous anecdote involving the music group Pink Floyd.

projetbabel.org/fluvial/rica_ourcq-canal.htm

[French Mystique Tours]

There's not a lot I can talk about at this point since I was getting more or less a nature experience riding along the canal. It's not like riding through villages where I might have some historical details to recount. The canal does pass by several small villages and to break up the photos of the canal I took pictures of the villages I passed through along the way.








I saw lots of different kinds of waterfowl, cormorants, mallards, swans and other birds I can't identify.








I knew there was a fairly well preserved 12th century Knights Templar Commanderie not far from the canal but I had to locate the path that led to it as it wasn't shown on my map. Looking to my right I spied what I suspected was the path, which ran along another canal.












I saw what appeared to be the commanderie just up ahead.

[French Mystique Tours]

It was a private residence so I couldn't enter the courtyard but that didn't matter because it was most impressive standing back to view it. The earliest mention of its association with the Templars is in the year 1184. It is assumed the primary buildings date from around 1160 and after the suppression of the Templars it was handed over to the Knights Hospitaliers, who continued to expand the domain into the 14th and 15th centuries. Mostly the history recounts through whose possession the domain passed over the centuries with no grand tales of adventure or intrigue. The remaining buildings consist of a gothic chapel, convent buildings, and logis plus some outbuildings. If you like Templar stuff I found a website that has a pretty good history on this commanderie. Scroll down through the page and look for the name Moisy-le-Temple:

www.templiers.net/departements/index.php?page=02












That was a nice visit. Time to turn around and head back to the canal.










Approaching the town of Mareuil-sur-Ourcq, which doesn't have much in the way of fascinating history to recount..

[French Mystique Tours]

After Mareuil is a tranquil section of the canal where it's bordered on both sides by forest for about 4km.












Nice fall colors.










I noticed I was passing by a little village called Marolles and it looked kinda quaint so I decided to take a spin around the village.

[French Mystique Tours]

Didn't find any fascinating history about Marolles either, other than its church is a listed historic monument.










As you move away from the canal you are reminded that you are in an agricultural region.






Marolles was tiny (population about 665) but every little nook and cranny had something picturesque to reveal.

[French Mystique Tours]

Of all the towns and villages along the canal Marolles also has the prettiest water frontage, rivalled only by La Ferté-Milon.

[French Mystique Tours]

Moving along from Marolles it was just a few kilometers until I arrived at the outskirts of my destination of La Ferté-Milon, which receives a rating of one star on the Michelin map.






I catch my first glimpse of the castle ruin poking above the treetops.








Arriving in the center of the village.

[French Mystique Tours]

It was due to the presence in the 5th century of Saint Waast and Saint Vulgis that La Ferté-Milon was born. Chapels and monasteries were built in their memory at the same time that a ''ferté'' was being created, meaning a defended place. The town had such a reputation for virtue that in 884, Paris, under the menace of the vikings, sent the relics of Sainte-Geneviève for protection.

In the 8th century the local seigneur Milon built a fortress fortified with ramparts and thus the etymology of the town's name. In 1395 Louis d'Orléans, second son of king Charles V, undertook construction of the château whose remains exist today. At the time Louis was battling his uncle, Philippe le Hardi, who was allied with the Burgundians during the Hundred Years War. The castle was part of a defensive lines of fortresses built along the frontier of the Valois duchy, one of which is the famous Château de Pierrefonds. Work on the château stopped in 1407 when Louis was assassinated by the followers of Jean sans Peur. His daughter Marguerite inherited the château but abandoned it. In 1429 Joan of Arc stopped in La Ferté on her way to Reims. At the end of the 16th century the Wars of Religion ravaged the area and The Catholic Leaugue took possession of the unfinished château. The town refused to submit to Henry IV and he laid seige to it. The town eventually submitted and afterwards the king ordered the château to be dismantled. The demolition commenced on the 25th of December 1594 and took 28 days. The château in its present state is the result of that demolition and has looked more or less the same for the past 4 centuries. Other horrifying and devastating events menaced the town during the civil revolt known as The Fronde in the mid 17th century, then again during The Revolution and then again during WWI. A history similar to many other northern French towns and villages. It looks pretty well fixed up today after all those centuries of ravaging and you'd never know today that such things used to happen here.

I was at the river and the château was high up on a hill above the town so it was time to do some uphill riding.












La Ferté-Milon is the birthplace of the famous playwright Jean Racine. Orphaned at the age of 4 he was raised by his grandparents in the town until the age of 10. The town has a Jean Racine Museum and among items in the collection are letters, engravings, portraits and some original editions of his works as well as the accompanying music. There are also numerous items that relate to the history of La Ferté. The museum is open from April 1st to November 1st on weekends and holidays and the rest of the year during the week but only on reservation for groups with the tourist office. Here's the Jean Racine statue.








Here's the Eglise Notre Dame, built in the 13th century and modified in successive centuries.








Arriving at the top of the hill the château was to my right but I took a left to keep climbing above the château so I could get some scenic views of the area from the heights of the summit.

[French Mystique Tours]

I headed back towards the château. The little village at the top of the hill is kinda charming.
















My first glimpse of the château.

[French Mystique Tours]

It's only a facade that still exists. I went to go check out the other side.














The best part of the château visit is the view from the terrace.








More autumn colors.








My visit to La Ferté-Milon was finished so it was time to head back down the hill, through the village and on to the train station.