Postcard Perfect France in Gerberoy
Zagan the camping-car is loving the feeling of grass under his tyres as he rests up in a field / car park at our latest stop. We’re in the picture postcard village of Gerberoy in France (N49.53147 E.1.84805), also known as the ‘Ville des roses‘.
Waking up this morning to slightly cloudy skies made the decision to leave Neufchatel-en-Bray much easier. Even though we knew there was a free concert on tonight, and the weekly market would be taking place this outside the Salle de Fromages (yes, we discovered a huge cheese hall on our last walk around the town), we felt it was time to move on.
A lady called Margaret had been in touch with us via our Facebook page with a tip off to visit Gerberoy. After spotting that it has two tourist attraction stars on our Michelin map, we thought we’d pop by. As it was only a short hop from Neufchatel-en-Bray (especially as shat-nav opted to take us down single track road short cuts – her favourite) we were parked up and having a brew by 10am.
We set off to explore the village, knowing very little about it. It’s pretty much car free, hence the huge free car park we’d be making our home for the night. The skies are also free of telegraph poles and electrical wires, which may go someway to explain its status as one of the plus beaux villages de France – one of the most beautiful villages in France (there are 156 of them currently).
Being Saturday we’re no longer totally off peak, so places are open. Despite getting here early there’s a steady trickle of folks capturing the beauty of the place, several of them adorned with huge sets of headphones – they are either very much into their music around here, or it’s the audio tour from the tourist office. The place is steeped in history having been a fortress frontier town on the border with English Normandy. It was even given the title of “city” in 1202, awarded by King Philippe Auguste. However the main reason people visit Gerberoy is due to a painter.
Impressionist artist Henri Le Sidaner was living in Versailles but longed to live in the countryside like his friend Jean-Claude Monet (you may have heard of him, he liked water lillies!) who lived about 60km from here in Giverny. In March 1901 Le Sidaner discovered the village of Gerberoy near Beauvais and bought a property of 3500 square metres (all French real estate listings include the square metre-age, we British tend to measure in bedrooms) due to the admirable sunlight conditions – we must have picked a bad day. Le Sidaner decided to help the village by growing roses of many colours over most of the medieval houses and creating a beautiful ‘Italian style’ garden on top of the old chateau’s ruins.
A sneaky look into the Italian style garden from a viewpoint
Gerberoy ‘Ville des Roses‘ holds a rose festival each June. Sadly we’re a tad early for them all to be out in bloom, but there’s still enough smattering of colour to give an idea of how amazing it would look.
It took us a couple of hours to walk around the whole village, including the church where we almost fooled by its marble-effect painted wood (sort of the opposite of ‘Paint and Grain’). We ogled the restaurant menus, mildly tempted by the choice but not so much the prices. Yes, we’re in full-on tourist central here, not just that, but posh tourist central, and the prices reflect that. We should have realised when two soft-top BMWs parked up next to Zagan and by the selection of gleaming 4x4s lining the route into the village. Instead of the €56 taster menus (€54 without cheese!) and artisanal biccies on offer, we headed back to Zagan and ripped into a packed of chocolate digestives – much more our thing.
Can you spot the marble-wood?
Post-biccy refuel, Jay set off for a jog around the area. The village is nestled in lush green rolling hills, which makes a nice change from the long, straight flat of the Avenue Verte. Our friends are on their way south to the Loire as I type this, so we’ll get the map out and make a plan for our route to meet up with them next week. The sun is burning off some of the cloud, so we might take another stroll around the village later to see it in the sunlight that so captivated Henri Le Sidaner.
Ju x
Bonus photo – Jay tries the phone box in the village, only it has no phone, so he uses his own…
Hi, can you remind me what SIM you use for your 4G/WiFi router please?
We need another before we set off and you’ve probably researched it.
Cheers, Lee.
Hi Lee. We’re using a Vodafone sim at the moment on a 30 day rolling contract which gives us the flexibility we want. We also have a 3 ‘Internet with legs’ SIM on board as a back up. Probably worth doing your own research though as we got these a while back and there are probably better offers out there now.
Looks beautiful and interesting. One to add to the list.
Hi guys. Gerberoy is en-route and a bucket list item. Since it may rain tomorrow I was worried about the parking field. Humberto spins the front wheels if anyone even mentions wet grass. Is it fairly well-packed hard ground?
Hi Lee
The road to the field is wide and compacted aggregate so you can at least visit the town. The field was being used by motorhomes, buses and cars so is well compacted, but mostly on a slope. We stayed in a relatively flat bit at the bottom near the road and I think we’d have gotten safely away unless it really was torrential.
Cheers, Jay
Cheers Jay. Looks like a week of rain. I may stick to the gravel road.
Humberto is laughably hopeless on wet grass more than 1% gradient.
Fair enough! I think you might be able to park at the top of the gravel road if it’s not too busy and stay there, or we saw lots of cars parked on the road below the grassy car park – might be possible to stay there too. Cheers, Jay