Bar-le-Duc is a small town in Meuse, the departement next to Haute-Marne. It's smaller than Saint-Dizier, but gives the impression of somewhere much bigger. The high street is a lot bigger, there are more and better shops, and the buildings are prettier - some areas are rather run down, but you have the impression that it's a real old town rather than a collection of 1960s unpleasantness. There are even some greengrocers and butchers - something sorely lacking here. Didn't buy anything because I'm going to be away for the weekend, but I think I'll be doing some shopping there in the future. Even though it's a bit further than Whitstable from Canterbury!

I wandered through the town for a while, always heading upwards. Most of the town's in a valley, but it's spread up the sides, and I walked up a lot of steps. I went past a clock tower which you can see from the town centre, and which had a plaque saying that it was a Monument Historique and that it dated from the 16th century. So slightly, but only slightly, more helpful than the blue plaques you see around Canterbury which say "Historic Building of Kent"!

I kept walking, and came across the museum. It's housed in a rather small château, probably from around the 17 or 1800s (but again there's no signs to say so) with a good view over the town and surrounding hills. To be honest I was slightly disappointed with the museum - there's not much of enormous interest and again, bugger all information on the exhibits! Still, a petrolhead like me was very pleased to see a De Dion Bouton motor-tricycle from 1900. Fuel tank directly under the bike-type saddle with a copper pipe leading to the rear-mounted engine, which lacked a radiator but which had cooling fins sticking out everywhere - beautiful. I wanted to ride it - but it only had one tyre. And not much in the way of brakes. Quite fun to see the precursor of those horrible little scooters that French teenagers ride though.

After that, I took a different route back to the town centre. Navigation's quite easy in Bar-le-Duc - I'd gone up to get to the museum, so to get to the car I went down. Stopped in a little church on the way - it was very dark inside, with only tall narrow stained glass windows letting light in. Sombre, in the French style.