INFORMATION
For information about the Meuse Cycle Route in France
For information about touring the Ardennes
The best trips, I always think, are the unplanned ones, where roads untravelled take you to places unthought of. At summer's end, the weather gods guided us to the French Ardennes and the unheard-of town of Revin, through which by happy chance (since we have wheels for legs) runs the Meuse Cycle Route. This waymarked route follows the River Meuse for 1,000 kilometres from its source to the sea.
The moss-green Meuse meanders timelessly through the tree-mantled hills of the Ardennes. It has taken the river many millennia to carve this looping route through rock, and it is in no hurry to reach its destination.
The Trans-Ardennes section of the Meuse Cycle Route is a voie verte (traffic-free path) that runs cheek by jowl with the riverbank on smooth Tarmac for 85km. Our journey both north and south from Revin was, therefore, mostly level and easy on the legs.
Northwards, we passed through a couple of villages nestled within loops of the rambling river, before reaching Fumay. We rolled through this small town along a quayside lined with ancient houses and warehouses, which once watched over a waterway bustling with goods barges.
Slate mining made Fumay wealthy, and centuries of excavation sculpted the landscape with quarries. Tourism has replaced slate, and a kilometre-long zipwirepath from a leisure park in a former quarry.
