Saturday 1st October
Buxy to Cluny.
We whizzed down to look at the old walled part of Buxy where we had had supper at the hotel Girardot the night before (I mention this as we know some Girardots)
and then took a look at a very ancient if rather ribald wall mural which depicts a whole year of grape work including a lot of wenches obviously there to entertain the vignerons. It’s a shame they had to paint it behind such and important traffic sign!
and then re-joined the voie verte which goes all the way between Chagny and Macon, about 90 K’s in all. It is awfully easy just following on and looking at the various towns and sites suggested en route. On the outskirts of Cluny there is a skateboard park, normally inhabited by teenagers but this time by serious adults on rollerblades. The first to arrive tried a jump on the kicker, fell off and grazed his knee and winded himself so badly that the others abandoned the park and moved off!
We then stopped at St Gengoux le National , yet another old walled town with a station now completely turned over to being a stop off point for walkers, cyclists, roller bladders and even motor-homers. I tried unsuccessfully to fill my water bottle from the old steam train topping up point.
Funny to think that nowadays ‘topping up’ is something you do for your mobile phone.
A really helpful couple in the Hotel de Gare made us some rather good baguettes filled with his home made pate. Delicious.
The whole world was on bikes and skate boards, and at times the route was quite congested there were even children on 4 wheeled chariots weaving all over the place
We stopped to watched 7 red kites being mobbed by 3 smaller falcons all enjoying thermals in the hot air, but photographing them was tricky.
Eventually we reached the river Grosne and stopped to eat our picnic. We were joined by a flock of blackcaps and two extremely successful fly fishermen who seemed to be catching minnows and slipping them into cans full of water hanging on their flanks. We had to ask what they were going to do with them and the answer was that they would be ‘live bait’ for pike fishing later on today. The pate baguette tasted just fine to us.
We finally arrived in Cluny much famed for it’s 10th century abbey, and the riding academy for the gendarmerie. The centre seems to be one large dressage arena and sandy tracks for exercising horses with a strong smell of horse manure. We rather failed on photos of either of these as the centre was absolutely packed with visitors. By the time we had queued in the tourist office the Abbey had shut and it was getting dark! We were lucky to take the last room in town as there is an apple fair here tomorrow. We stayed on the outskirts and walked back in to a pizza house for supper which was absolutely humming with people. The local entertainment seemed to be being provided by a very drunk old lady who was blocking the door to the bar/restaurant next door whooping and hollering, sliding her leg up and down the doorway and lifting her skirt up at all the men sitting at the tables outside. Fortunately our bar was a little bit less exciting except for the girl who came in late and sat at the table beside us, ordered an ice cream and promptly fell asleep. The waiter woke her and she pushed it about a bit, mashed the cream on the top all over her face and then fell asleep again. Sadly we’d paid our bill by now so left missing the next instalment. I bet getting any money out of her was going to be a problem.
Here is a picture of the old bridge on our way home from supper.
Sunday 2nd October (Rosie’s birthday)
Cluny to Macon
The sun is still shining which is just great but it is in England too so we are feeling a bit cheated – having come all this way we expected things to be different! Anyway - off the Apple Fair which was tiny but you’ve never seen so many stalls selling the most delicious food and some of it only loosely associated with apples.
They were also frying huge pots full of pig fatty bits which after 20 minutes were reduced to what we’d call pork scratching. The chef offered us a taste direct from the pan and apart from burning our tongues the taste of hot pork scratching is delicious.
In the same vein were the Boudin sausages – pretty horrific to look at (and we admit we didn’t taste any) but they were going down a storm with the locals. They were cooking enormous pans of sliced apples in pork fat to go with the boudin. And then just to show that at an Apple Fair you can see anything, there was a stall demonstrating all the different wools (including pig hair) you can use to stuff a mattress. I tested out the mattress and managed to catch the edge of the tent as I sat down and pulled the roof off the pagoda thing it was under – slight consternation, but it was soon fixed. The very polite salesman was a bit crushed when we said we were traveling by bike, as he had hoped to make a sale of a mattress or 2.
and an assortment of ancient tractors which we thought would keep Ant Earp happy for hours!
So we left the Apple Fair and headed off in the direction of Macon via the Tunnel du Bois Clair which we are told takes 8 minutes to cycle through and is very cold in the middle so have an extra jersey ready. The alternative to the tunnel is to go over the hill – a height of 396 meters of zigzag road so absolutely no way were we going up that. So we were prepared with extra jerseys, the tunnel doesn’t close for the winter until 15th October, and off we went.
Oh no ....... , the tunnel is closed, the French bat preservation society had decided that the wintering bats had come home a fortnight early and therefore the tunnel must be closed without notice or warning, great! And from the mouth of the tunnel there is nowhere to go other than UP, scrambling the bikes over the ‘hill climb’ road barriers and start puffing up the hill. There were a couple of rather forlorn looking traveling musicians sitting outside the tunnel doors, with very heavy rucksacks. We all spoke French very politely to each other about ‘le problem avec la route’ , when a French couple appeared on bikes. I questioned them too, after which the musicians asked what they had said, in English! At this point we met two German girls cycling in bikini tops who had the benefit of not having any luggage (they were on an organized tour) but the disadvantage of having lost all of the tour guide maps. We couldn’t be much help to them except point them up the hill and say ‘grada rouse’ which if I remember correctly is ‘straight on’ in German. After a short while my heart was doing 108 to the minute (and nothing to do with the girls) and I felt it prudent to sit down and take a break but we made it to the top where the view was stunning and our personal satisfaction quota reached a new high even if it isn’t quite the same as Rosie going over the Col de Galibier in her Etape in July.
Going down the other side was a absolute doddle and we felt sorry for the families with young children at the other end of the tunnel who seemed to be as disappointed to find the gates shut, as we had been. It is here we became embroiled in a gang of youths on mountain bikes yelling and shouting and pedaling furiously in the wrong gears with their seats far too low and wearing thick blue jeans in the 30 degree heat. It was no wonder they kept abandoning their bikes anywhere all over the piste and lying down for a fag before rushing past us again – it was reminiscent of the ‘hare and the tortoise’ story.
We passed the Chateau Berze le Chatel which was magnificent even if it looked a bit closed up, who knows whether anyone lives there or not, perhaps they were all inside having a splendid lunch.
By comparison we had a splendid pork roti baguette in a roadside cafe just outside Macon and felt pretty good about it too!
Macon was a bit of a nightmare, lots of traffic and no BandBs and not that many hotels that were open. Being Sunday afternoon it was all looking pretty dirty with quite a few drunks wandering the streets. Having enquired of their rates in three we finally found a reasonable deal at the All Seasons and slumped in there to play with the wifi and plan our route out of the town tomorrow. The game changes here slightly as the voie verte has now ended and although a route is planned that is as far as it goes so it is back to working out the most direct route possible without going on any motorways, red or yellow roads. It’s like playing snakes and ladders only with your life!
We cheered up a bit after a good supper in the hotel and our first tasting of Macon blanc et rouge. (Alec was very happy as the blanc was included in the dinner!)
Buxy to Cluny.
We whizzed down to look at the old walled part of Buxy where we had had supper at the hotel Girardot the night before (I mention this as we know some Girardots)
and then took a look at a very ancient if rather ribald wall mural which depicts a whole year of grape work including a lot of wenches obviously there to entertain the vignerons. It’s a shame they had to paint it behind such and important traffic sign!
and then re-joined the voie verte which goes all the way between Chagny and Macon, about 90 K’s in all. It is awfully easy just following on and looking at the various towns and sites suggested en route. On the outskirts of Cluny there is a skateboard park, normally inhabited by teenagers but this time by serious adults on rollerblades. The first to arrive tried a jump on the kicker, fell off and grazed his knee and winded himself so badly that the others abandoned the park and moved off!
We then stopped at St Gengoux le National , yet another old walled town with a station now completely turned over to being a stop off point for walkers, cyclists, roller bladders and even motor-homers. I tried unsuccessfully to fill my water bottle from the old steam train topping up point.
Funny to think that nowadays ‘topping up’ is something you do for your mobile phone.
A really helpful couple in the Hotel de Gare made us some rather good baguettes filled with his home made pate. Delicious.
The whole world was on bikes and skate boards, and at times the route was quite congested there were even children on 4 wheeled chariots weaving all over the place
We stopped to watched 7 red kites being mobbed by 3 smaller falcons all enjoying thermals in the hot air, but photographing them was tricky.
Eventually we reached the river Grosne and stopped to eat our picnic. We were joined by a flock of blackcaps and two extremely successful fly fishermen who seemed to be catching minnows and slipping them into cans full of water hanging on their flanks. We had to ask what they were going to do with them and the answer was that they would be ‘live bait’ for pike fishing later on today. The pate baguette tasted just fine to us.
We finally arrived in Cluny much famed for it’s 10th century abbey, and the riding academy for the gendarmerie. The centre seems to be one large dressage arena and sandy tracks for exercising horses with a strong smell of horse manure. We rather failed on photos of either of these as the centre was absolutely packed with visitors. By the time we had queued in the tourist office the Abbey had shut and it was getting dark! We were lucky to take the last room in town as there is an apple fair here tomorrow. We stayed on the outskirts and walked back in to a pizza house for supper which was absolutely humming with people. The local entertainment seemed to be being provided by a very drunk old lady who was blocking the door to the bar/restaurant next door whooping and hollering, sliding her leg up and down the doorway and lifting her skirt up at all the men sitting at the tables outside. Fortunately our bar was a little bit less exciting except for the girl who came in late and sat at the table beside us, ordered an ice cream and promptly fell asleep. The waiter woke her and she pushed it about a bit, mashed the cream on the top all over her face and then fell asleep again. Sadly we’d paid our bill by now so left missing the next instalment. I bet getting any money out of her was going to be a problem.
Here is a picture of the old bridge on our way home from supper.
Sunday 2nd October (Rosie’s birthday)
Cluny to Macon
The sun is still shining which is just great but it is in England too so we are feeling a bit cheated – having come all this way we expected things to be different! Anyway - off the Apple Fair which was tiny but you’ve never seen so many stalls selling the most delicious food and some of it only loosely associated with apples.
They were also frying huge pots full of pig fatty bits which after 20 minutes were reduced to what we’d call pork scratching. The chef offered us a taste direct from the pan and apart from burning our tongues the taste of hot pork scratching is delicious.
In the same vein were the Boudin sausages – pretty horrific to look at (and we admit we didn’t taste any) but they were going down a storm with the locals. They were cooking enormous pans of sliced apples in pork fat to go with the boudin. And then just to show that at an Apple Fair you can see anything, there was a stall demonstrating all the different wools (including pig hair) you can use to stuff a mattress. I tested out the mattress and managed to catch the edge of the tent as I sat down and pulled the roof off the pagoda thing it was under – slight consternation, but it was soon fixed. The very polite salesman was a bit crushed when we said we were traveling by bike, as he had hoped to make a sale of a mattress or 2.
and an assortment of ancient tractors which we thought would keep Ant Earp happy for hours!
So we left the Apple Fair and headed off in the direction of Macon via the Tunnel du Bois Clair which we are told takes 8 minutes to cycle through and is very cold in the middle so have an extra jersey ready. The alternative to the tunnel is to go over the hill – a height of 396 meters of zigzag road so absolutely no way were we going up that. So we were prepared with extra jerseys, the tunnel doesn’t close for the winter until 15th October, and off we went.
Oh no ....... , the tunnel is closed, the French bat preservation society had decided that the wintering bats had come home a fortnight early and therefore the tunnel must be closed without notice or warning, great! And from the mouth of the tunnel there is nowhere to go other than UP, scrambling the bikes over the ‘hill climb’ road barriers and start puffing up the hill. There were a couple of rather forlorn looking traveling musicians sitting outside the tunnel doors, with very heavy rucksacks. We all spoke French very politely to each other about ‘le problem avec la route’ , when a French couple appeared on bikes. I questioned them too, after which the musicians asked what they had said, in English! At this point we met two German girls cycling in bikini tops who had the benefit of not having any luggage (they were on an organized tour) but the disadvantage of having lost all of the tour guide maps. We couldn’t be much help to them except point them up the hill and say ‘grada rouse’ which if I remember correctly is ‘straight on’ in German. After a short while my heart was doing 108 to the minute (and nothing to do with the girls) and I felt it prudent to sit down and take a break but we made it to the top where the view was stunning and our personal satisfaction quota reached a new high even if it isn’t quite the same as Rosie going over the Col de Galibier in her Etape in July.
Going down the other side was a absolute doddle and we felt sorry for the families with young children at the other end of the tunnel who seemed to be as disappointed to find the gates shut, as we had been. It is here we became embroiled in a gang of youths on mountain bikes yelling and shouting and pedaling furiously in the wrong gears with their seats far too low and wearing thick blue jeans in the 30 degree heat. It was no wonder they kept abandoning their bikes anywhere all over the piste and lying down for a fag before rushing past us again – it was reminiscent of the ‘hare and the tortoise’ story.
We passed the Chateau Berze le Chatel which was magnificent even if it looked a bit closed up, who knows whether anyone lives there or not, perhaps they were all inside having a splendid lunch.
By comparison we had a splendid pork roti baguette in a roadside cafe just outside Macon and felt pretty good about it too!
Macon was a bit of a nightmare, lots of traffic and no BandBs and not that many hotels that were open. Being Sunday afternoon it was all looking pretty dirty with quite a few drunks wandering the streets. Having enquired of their rates in three we finally found a reasonable deal at the All Seasons and slumped in there to play with the wifi and plan our route out of the town tomorrow. The game changes here slightly as the voie verte has now ended and although a route is planned that is as far as it goes so it is back to working out the most direct route possible without going on any motorways, red or yellow roads. It’s like playing snakes and ladders only with your life!
We cheered up a bit after a good supper in the hotel and our first tasting of Macon blanc et rouge. (Alec was very happy as the blanc was included in the dinner!)
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