- 6 days ago
Great Continental Railway Journeys - Season 9 Episode 10 - Namur to Florenville
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00:01I'm embarking on a new series of railway journeys, exploring Europe's most
00:08beautiful and historic regions. Oh, we're about to set off.
00:14From Belgium. Oh, I'm loving this.
00:20To Hungary. Oh, this is amazing. And the islands of Sardinia.
00:31And Corsica. I'll enjoy nature, history, culture and fun in some of Europe's most enchanting
00:41places. I am looking forward to a tremendous railway adventure.
01:16My exploration of Belgium by train is coming to an end. I've left behind Flanders where the people speak Dutch
01:23and Brussels, which is officially bilingual.
01:26And I'm now amongst the Walloons who speak French. A little like that work of science fiction by the French
01:34writer Jules Verne, I'll travel towards the centre of the earth.
01:37And into the Middle Ages, where knights knocked each other down chivalrously and Trappist monks brewed beer silently.
01:51My route from the capital Brussels has taken me through densely populated Flanders to the North Sea coast, then on
01:59to the more rural region of Wallonia.
02:01Using the impressive rail system, I've discovered remarkable cities, historic landmarks and a rich culture.
02:09I'll finish today in the far south, close to the French border.
02:26My first stop this morning is Namur, home to Wallonia's regional parliament, on the confluence of the rivers Meuse and
02:35Sombra.
02:43Wallonia. Wallonia, or the Walloon region, occupies more than half of the territory of Belgium.
02:50Namur is the capital city, and its people had the reassurance of a citadel, a hilltop fortress into which they
02:59could withdraw when they were under attack.
03:04One of Belgium's great historic sites, the citadel towers almost 340 feet above the city.
03:16Thankfully, aerial transport is provided.
03:25I'm going to storm the citadel by cable car, not a technology available in past centuries, and it rather understates
03:32how difficult an assault would have been.
03:34First of all, you would have to cross the river, the Sombra here or the Murs over there, and then
03:39you would face concentric rings of fortification.
03:50The former defences stretch over almost 200 acres across this rocky outcrop.
03:59On the ramparts, my guide is site manager Jean-Sabastien Misson.
04:05Jean-Sabastien, I've just flown over the citadel in the cable car.
04:09Tell me a bit about the history of this hilltop site.
04:12The Counts of Namur established themselves at the beginning of the 10th century with a fortress.
04:18And then the county was part of the Habsburg dominion, and they transformed the fortress into a citadel.
04:24At the end of the 18th century, Emperor Joseph II of the Holy Roman Empire and then Emperor Napoleon decided
04:32to demilitarize the citadel.
04:34And it fell into ruin. After 1815, the new Dutch state rebuilt the citadel.
04:42So what you see now is mainly Dutch.
04:44Has this site seen much action over the centuries?
04:47Yes. So at the end of the 17th century, during the wars waged by Louis XIV,
04:53and also during the wars between France and neighboring countries in the middle of the 18th century.
05:03While the center of the citadel remained a military site until the 1970s, used mainly as a barracks,
05:10from the late 19th century, the surrounding area was developed as a park and for leisure.
05:17Ooh.
05:18An extensive network of tunnels reminds us how Namur was safeguarded.
05:26What was the defensive principle of a citadel?
05:30Well, a medieval fortress was made of high walls punctuated by towers, and these were very vulnerable when artillery arrived.
05:39So engineers, Italians, in the 16th century developed a new way of building fortifications,
05:47which were much lower, much thicker, more extended around the cities, and also people went underground.
05:56These fortifications could withstand artillery fire, and provisions, munitions, gunpowder were protected,
06:05so the cities could withstand much longer sieges.
06:10Who built these tunnels of stone and brick?
06:12These date from the end of the 17th century, in total seven kilometers of underground tunnels,
06:18so big that Napoleon, the first, named the citadel as the termite mound of Europe.
06:26Ha, ha, ha, ha!
06:37Oh!
06:38It's good to be out in the open air.
06:41Namur is really striking, with this citadel rising above the confluence of the two rivers.
06:46How unusual is it?
06:48Well, of course it's special, but it's not the only fortification along the Meuse.
06:53After Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington encouraged the Dutch state to build a series of new fortifications along the southern
06:59border,
07:00that deter France from invading again.
07:02We also had Dinant, Ennui, and these three guarded the gateway into the Dutch realm.
07:09The enemy is still being considered to be France.
07:11Yeah, of course.
07:17Across the river Somme, in the heart of the old town, the city's traditions are celebrated,
07:23at Les Battelliers Museum and Cultural Centre.
07:31Jousting conjures the idea of knights in shining armor on their chargers,
07:38hurtling towards each other with their lances.
07:41But the joust, a chivalrous tournament, can also be conducted on foot.
07:47And here in Namur, they take it to new heights.
07:54Jousting on stilts has been popular here for over six centuries, and today the city's two teams are practicing for
08:01their next battle.
08:03This is fantastically exciting. The two rivals with their yellow and black and red and white stilts.
08:13The ominous beat of the drum tells me the tournament is about to begin.
08:19And in they go for the fight!
08:22Oh!
08:26Can't believe how they stay up!
08:29Oh!
08:31Oh!
08:32Oh!
08:33Oh!
08:33Oh!
08:33And the first man is down!
08:41Oh!
08:42And the second man is down!
08:45And like chess pieces, they're removed from the board.
08:51This is one of the strangest spectacles I've ever seen.
08:55And I must say, one of the most exciting!
08:58Oh!
09:02Oh!
09:07They're falling like nine pins.
09:10It's looking good for the red and white.
09:13Solitary.
09:14Yellow and black is left.
09:18Oh!
09:18He takes out one red and white.
09:20He's fighting back.
09:23Oh!
09:24He's got another one!
09:27And here they go again.
09:30He's got another red and white.
09:33And now we're equal.
09:34One yellow and black, one red and white left.
09:37And he's down!
09:39We have a victor!
09:41The reds and the whites have won.
09:44What an exciting match.
09:46The reds and the white, one reds and the reds and the reds and the reds and the reds.
09:49On the winning side is the president of Namur's Stilt Jousting Association, Fred Guilong.
09:55Hello, Fred!
09:56Hello, how are you?
09:58I'm Michael. It's wonderful to see you.
10:00Nice to meet you too.
10:01Do you mind showing me how you get onto your stilts, please?
10:04It's very easy, you know.
10:05I am an old man, but I place my feet, my foot here in the arch.
10:12Yes.
10:13I push up my body to the second one.
10:16Yes.
10:16Like this.
10:17Oh!
10:18Yeah.
10:20My arms are in my back.
10:23Yes.
10:23It's more easy to walk.
10:25So, I mean, this has become second nature to you.
10:29Yes, but I began the practice when I was 14 years old.
10:34Show me the combat technique.
10:36You use your stilts as a weapon.
10:39The first is to strike the stilts of the opponent like this, for example.
10:44The second technique is you use your body and you hook the elbow of your opponent down to the ground,
10:56like this.
10:57It's the genuflexion in French.
10:59Ah!
11:00It's the kneel, the kneeling technique.
11:02Yes.
11:05Who are the sides or the teams in the battle?
11:08My side is Avarice, the red and the white one.
11:12Another team is the Melon, the black and the yellow.
11:16Two teams who struggle each other many years, many centuries here in Namia.
11:22So, are you born either red and white or black and yellow?
11:26No!
11:28Today we choose our team by friendship, essentially.
11:35But in the time, if you're living in the center of the city, you are Melon.
11:41Outside the city, you are Avarice.
11:44Is there a big rivalry between the two sides?
11:47In the middle of the age, it was really the case.
11:50Today, it's more a sport competition between France.
11:54But during September is the golden steel just.
11:59More than 7,000 come to see our fight.
12:03The steel justing is in the DNA of the people here in the city.
12:13Namur is also said to be the birthplace of one of the world's favourite foods.
12:20Frites, what the British call chips, what the Americans call French fries, eaten here with mayonnaise.
12:27They may not be French at all.
12:29In fact, there's good reason to think they may have been invented in Namur.
12:32A man called Joseph Gerard, right in 1781, recorded that the people of this city were frying potatoes.
12:41Maybe because they'd run out of fish.
12:43And he said the practice went back more than 100 years.
12:46Now, there's no particular evidence for that.
12:49But certainly, it's a huge part now of the national culture.
12:53And certainly, here, it is...iconic.
13:02My next train will take me about 30 miles to Marloi, in the south-east of Wallonia.
13:14The ancient Ardennes forest stretches across rugged hills and valleys in this rural part of Belgium.
13:22It's a popular destination for hikers and holidaymakers.
13:25And I'm keen to explore one of its natural wonders in depth.
13:31We don't always know what's under our feet.
13:34And it's striking how many enormous, subterranean, naturally occurring cavities have been discovered relatively recently and by chance.
13:45That's certainly the case with the Grotte d'Oton.
13:48Grotte being the French for cave.
13:51The Latin is spelunker.
13:53So let's go spelunking together.
14:09Just south of the town of Oton, the caves are amongst the largest in Belgium.
14:15Part of the Famene Ardennes Geopark, a 350 square mile area of important geological heritage.
14:24Hello, William.
14:25Hello.
14:27William Herbrechts has been a guide here for 15 years.
14:30Welcome.
14:31Thank you very much.
14:32Welcome to the beautiful cave.
14:34Oh, I'm really looking forward to it.
14:35We go inside.
14:42Tell me a little bit about how the cave was discovered, William.
14:45The cave was discovered by a quarry.
14:48In 1958, after an explosion, there was an opening in the wall.
14:53A man walking with his duck went inside the hole.
14:56He didn't go far because it was pitch dark.
14:59And that man was a postman in Brussels.
15:02And on his delivery, there was the caving club.
15:06And he said that maybe there's something more, something bigger.
15:10And I went and I discovered the whole cave.
15:13The huge maze of limestone caverns descends more than 200 feet over three levels.
15:25William, this is really beautiful.
15:28Yes.
15:28We're in such a tall chamber here.
15:31And we now begin to see stalactites and stalagmites.
15:35And so many formations that look like vegetation or tentacles.
15:41And I could even imagine this being a sort of king or a deity or something here in the middle.
15:47With a bit of imagination, you can see everything you want.
15:50Yes.
15:50We are here in first chamber.
15:53It's the midnight chamber.
15:56How then was this formed?
15:58This cave is an infiltration cave.
16:00This has been made by mostly rainwater.
16:04And a few little streams, it rains, like it often does in Belgium.
16:09So it rains.
16:11The drops infiltrate the soil.
16:14There is CO2 in the soil.
16:17And water with CO2 makes acid water.
16:20And attacks dissolve the calcium carbonite, which is the main element in limestone.
16:27So naturally occurring acidity.
16:29They eat the limestone away.
16:30So the cracks roll wider and wider with rooms like this forming.
16:34How many millions of years does it take to form this, do you think?
16:37Well, within this cave, five million years.
16:39Mm-hmm.
16:40The water flows deeper and deeper.
16:42So the upper galleries are the older ones.
16:44And the deeper you go, the younger the galleries.
16:47Five million years sounds like quite a lot.
16:49But geologically speaking, that's quite recent.
16:52Yeah, it's yesterday.
16:54Yeah.
16:55And tell me about the colors.
16:57How do we get these very pretty colors?
16:58So white is pure limestone.
17:01Brown is seeped through a clay layer.
17:04You get orange or red colors.
17:08In some caves, it is iron here.
17:11It's not.
17:12It's decomposed plants and animals.
17:16It's so beautiful.
17:17I love the way it shines.
17:21The caves illuminate the geological history of the locality and also throw light on significant global changes.
17:30Do you want to see a beach?
17:31Of course.
17:32Of course.
17:32I'd love to see a beach.
17:34If you look above here, you see a layer lighter in color.
17:40Yes.
17:41I'll show you with this.
17:43So this is a beach 385 million years old.
17:48Oh.
17:49You see white spots.
17:51Yes.
17:51These are shells.
17:52Typical shells of that time.
17:54Now you see it vertically.
17:56But before it was horizontal.
17:58Yeah.
17:58So everything has been pushed up here by tectonic powers.
18:02So continents moving and pushing each other.
18:04And with the years, they pushed everything up.
18:06And it formed a whole mountain range.
18:08All these rocks were formed this way around.
18:12Yes.
18:12So they were formed in layers.
18:14Mm-hmm.
18:15Then at some point, that has all been shifted.
18:18Yes.
18:19At that time, we were now South Africa.
18:23So we've been pushed north.
18:25It's like a book.
18:26So every layer is a chapter of the book.
18:29You just have to know how to read it.
18:32That's the problem.
18:34Further down the cave's 580 steps is one of the highlights of this underground world.
18:42What an extraordinary place.
18:44I've never seen anything like this.
18:46Stretching far in that direction.
18:48Far behind us.
18:49This is unique.
18:51Mm-hmm.
18:51There's only one place like this in Belgium.
18:54200 meters long.
18:5635 meters high.
18:57Wards part 6 meter.
18:59There are only maybe two or three places like this in Europe.
19:01So it's incredible.
19:04You enjoy your geology.
19:06It's fascinating.
19:07It's such a wonderful place.
19:19The last leg of my Belgian adventure propels me to Florentville, less than two miles from the French border.
19:31This is a nation of beer lovers, and I'm on my way to the unlikely setting of one of its
19:37most famous breweries.
19:40In the 17th century, an abbot, who thought that the Cistercian monks had become too lax, introduced a new regime
19:49that required penitence, hard work, and silence.
19:53His monastery was at La Trappe, and so those who follow that strict rule are known as Trappists.
20:01They're also required to be self-sufficient.
20:03And so, paradoxically, as it seems to me, they turned to making and selling beer.
20:11They have created the International Trappist Association to protect their brand, the sanctity of their monastic brews.
20:33Four miles south of Florentville, in the village of Villiers devant Orval, stands the Orval Abbey, first established in 1132.
20:49Monks may attempt to withdraw from the world, but it doesn't mean that the world will necessarily leave them alone.
20:57The monastery was destroyed by French troops in 1793, and the monks were unable to return here until 1926.
21:12A new abbey was built, and a brewery was set up to help to finance it, using water from the
21:18village spring.
21:19Brother Xavier has been a monk here for 36 years, and is the administrative director of the brewery.
21:26Brother Xavier, welcome. Hello.
21:29Welcome, Orval. Thank you.
21:30Thank you so much for your welcome. Tell me about the terrible destruction of 1793.
21:35The troops of revolutionaries have installed cannons, and during, I would say, a whole week, they will bombard.
21:45The French Revolution has chased the moines. During the 19th century, Orval, there was no more of an air ruin.
22:04Tell me, how did the monks begin to brew beer?
22:10At the time of medieval, the moines had a brassier. The architect, who rebuilt the monastery,
22:17s'est inspired by creating the place where, from 1931, we started to manufacture the beer Trappis d'Orval.
22:26The first maitre brassier was of Bavaroise. It was the one who introduced the use of houblons,
22:38very perfumed houblons. The second brassier was Ostenday, and he knew particularly well the brassier techniques
22:49in English and Irish.
22:50It was the first maitre brassier.
22:53Over 90 years later, the brewery now produces 22 million bottles of Orval beer a year,
23:00generating money for the abbey's running costs and charitable causes.
23:04In some monasteries, monks make the beer.
23:07But here, a team of 35 brewing staff is managed by brewmaster Anne-Francoise Pipard.
23:16Anne-Francoise. Hello, Michael.
23:17How lovely to see you. Quite a surprise to me for the brewery or monastery.
23:22I thought maybe it would be very small scale and maybe the monks would be making the beer.
23:26But this is actually quite a big business.
23:28Yes, big business for the abbey.
23:31You are the master brewer. In the history of master brewers, have there been many women?
23:37No. No. When I arrived here for 32 years, there was no woman in the brewery.
23:46And now my assistant is a woman. So, yes. We are two brewmasters.
23:52The sisterhood.
23:53Yes.
23:54You must have seen a lot of changes in that period.
23:57Yes, yes. We have a new building three years ago and a new bottling line.
24:03What has been the challenge of growing the business?
24:07To keep the same beer. Our customer, they don't want that we change the product.
24:13And the difficulty is to have always the same taste, the same aroma, but with a change of equipment.
24:22What are the qualities that consumers like about it?
24:25Oh, they want a beer with perfect foam, perfect CO2 content and with aroma of hops.
24:33But we have also a special yeast in Orval. It's considered like a wild yeast for other brewers.
24:41And these yeast contribute to the age. It's the reason why we can keep the beer a few years.
24:48Very interesting. Is it quite strong?
24:51It's not so strong for Belgian beer. We are between six and seven percent of alcohol content.
24:58There's an organization called the International Trappist Association.
25:02Yes. What does it aim to do?
25:06They protect the name and the brand of Trappist.
25:10And they control the quality of the product, of the Trappist project.
25:15And brother Xavier is now the president.
25:19Myself, I am in the control quality committee.
25:26Of the nine official Trappist breweries in Cistercian monasteries around the world,
25:31six are here in Belgium.
25:35Where do you sell your beer mainly?
25:38We sell 85 percent of the production in Belgium.
25:41And the biggest export is in Luxembourg with five percent.
25:46We are present in Japan, United States, Canada.
25:50But we have a special beer, the Petit Orval.
25:54Yes.
25:55The small beer or the green Orval.
25:59At the origins, this beer was made only for the Abbey, for monks and for people that do a retreat.
26:06We give the possibility to people to taste it at the auberge near the Abbey.
26:11It's the only place you can taste that beer on tap.
26:15The only place in the world?
26:16In the world, yes.
26:19And Françoise, that is where I must go.
26:21Yeah.
26:22See you later.
26:23See you later.
26:25See you later.
26:35A special moment.
26:36A special moment for me.
26:38Perfect.
26:47Absolutely delicious.
26:49And all the better for knowing that it's only available on tap in this one place on the entire planet.
27:08In 1914, Britain went to war because what the tabloid newspapers described as plucky Belgium had been invaded by the
27:17Germans.
27:18And it's also been overrun by the Spanish and the Dutch and the French, and it suffered badly.
27:24And yet its opulent cities, Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, Ghent, Namur, have survived or risen again.
27:34And with their superb towers and spires, mansions and works of art, they offer a fine and complete insight into
27:45medieval life.
27:46I live just a short train ride from Belgium.
27:50And yet this has turned out to be a journey through time.
28:00Next time, it is lavish in its decoration.
28:05People lined up during the whole day just to get in and have a coffee.
28:09We were lucky to get a table.
28:12Tremendous pressure from the hose and the guy behind me is supporting me so I don't fall backwards.
28:20They abandoned their cars and set off for a new life.
28:23Yes, yes.
28:23Freedom is everything.
28:25You know, money doesn't make you happy if you are not free.
28:30They are great.
28:30They are great.
28:58Thank you for listening.
28:58This has been a long time for a new life.
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