Lac du Der: The Cranes and the Timber Churches of Champagne

Required Activities

• Be on the dyke before first light between October and February and watch the cranes lift off their roosts on the water in waves — 20,000 to 30,000 winter here, and on a November peak day the count has gone past a quarter of a million

• Sit out an hour in the hides at Chantecoq and at Champaubert and work through the other water birds on the lake's list of more than 200 species — grebes, pintail, pochard, curlew, storks — while you wait for the cranes

• Start the timber-church route at Châtillon-sur-Broué, one of the oldest in the Perthois along with Outines, and find its double-pitched bell tower standing on a porch; the 16th-century glass inside was destroyed by a hurricane in 1973, so what you see is 19th century. Then go into at least one more along the route

• Walk or cycle a stretch of the 20.3 km of dyke that rings the lake, from Giffaumont-Champaubert round towards the Chantecoq site, and pick out Chantecoq — the lake's only true island — from the top of the bank

• Walk out to the church of Champaubert standing alone on its peninsula, all that is left in place of the three drowned villages, then go to the Village Musée du Der at Sainte-Marie-du-Lac-Nuisement to find the timber church of Nuisement-aux-Bois, the school-and-mairie, the smithy and the dovecote, taken down and rebuilt there before the water came up