A Ruined Abbey in Longpont France

Longpont is a small village of only 255 inhabitants. It's located in Northern France just 13km south of the city of Soisson and about 75km to the northeast of Paris. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere.

We became aware of the town last year when we randomly drove through it on our way to another location. I think it was Epernay in the Champagne region.

As I drove through I just caught a glimpse of the Abbey ruins over the rooftops and thought it looked like a neat place to explore. We've actually been talking about going back for a long time now just to see what it's all about. It's close enough to home and we haven't done anything in months now, not since the Christmas Markets in Germany, so we figured we take advantage of the nice weather this weekend and have a look.

The Abbey ruins aren't extravagant or anything. They're basically just a regular size church thats now in shambles.

But there's something about a building that's falling apart that somehow makes it seem bigger and grander than what it actually is and probably ever was. I guess it has to do with your imagination.

The attached monk residence is in very good condition still, though I don't know what it is used for.

It looked particularly nice with the sun shining off it's white limestone facade though. The sun made it glow in its golden light.

A little ways down the street is an old world gate that acts as an entrance to the towns hotel and restaurant, the Abbey and the small village within.

Its attached to the hotel and restaurant and has four towers that make it look like a mini castle of sorts.

I don't know what it's used for now but there are curtains in the windows so I think it still has a purpose, maybe as part of the hotel. If it's a room that guests can stay in then that would be cool.

We spent about 5 minutes walking around and we pretty much saw everything that Longpont had to offer, then we walked up the road and into the woods for another 30 minutes or so.

You could still see the Abbey up there but I couldn't get a clear shot through the trees.

I thought the trees looked interesting there. Like neurons of the living, thinking forest - brain cells stretching out to communicate with each other.

I often think this when I see bare trees.

The ground was super muddy in a lot of places in the forest. It was churned up as if it had been marched over by a small army, or more likely a herd of some sort.

It was covered with hoof prints made by cows, sheep or wild boar. I couldn't really tell which and we didn't see any livestock in the area to know for sure.

Actually, we did see this shaggy pony in town but it was on its own. The prints weren't from a horse and I don't think this little guy could have made that many prints alone so I know for certain that he was not the culprit.

We spent a bit of time in the woods then headed back to the road and back to the Abbey where we parked our car.

The Abbey was blocked by a gate and a large stone wall and it wasn't open to the public that day.

We couldn't really get close to it but could still view it from afar.

The building and the property looked nice.

Longpont is an extremely small village so we didn't spend a lot of time there exploring. It was just enough to see the Abbey, take a walk and scratch it off the list of places that we've been to.

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for stopping by.