WALKING THE RAILS
Cycling on the Green line, Ohis
IMAGE: ALAMY
In the hamlet of Ohis, there’s a viaduct of the type that prompts passersby to pause and acknowledge the skill of the engineers who created it. So I do as I’m told, admiring the stone legs of a 19th-century wonder. It’s an arrogant joy, straddling the Oise River with such ease that — even though the railway line it once carried, from Hirson to Busigny, closed to passengers in 1959 — it seems to view the river as a footnote, stepping across it as if it were a stream.