Burgundy

Rob’s bit –

After Alsace, our next destination was the village of Vincelottes, just south of Auxerre in Burgundy, where one of Lesley’s former colleagues had a house.  We crossed the vastness of eastern France in one go, on provincial main roads, and although we got a brief impression of an interesting old town here or short range of hills there, it was mostly quietly, unspectacularly agricultural.

Lesley’s bit –

Before we’d bought the van, before we’d planned this big trip, my May half term week had been set aside for a girls’ week at Jill’s house in Burgundy. We’d all been looking forward to it greatly – pastime with good company, to quote Bluff King Hal from the Tudor topic all four of us have taught for many years. As it turned out it was a girls’ week plus a dog – oh, and a husband for a bit, but he didn’t cramp our style!

Friends Reunited

Vincelottes is on the River Yonne and was once a collection point for logs which were then sent in massive flotillas on to Paris. The house faces the river frontage, though no boats traverse this stretch, instead by-passing the weir and the still working flour mill and going on the canal just 100m over the bridge. It’s a lovely setting though and typically French with very private gates at the front and an inner courtyard. There is not much to the village, but it does boast a Michelin star restaurant, a French take on an “English” bar, where you apparently invited to play either darts or dominos, and some lovely walks and views. Across the river and the canal is the larger village of Vincelles where there is a boat stop-off point, a couple of boulangeries, a supermarket, a tiny weekly market (Wednesday), a campsite and the usual well equipped sporting facilities which seem to be enjoyed by many small French towns and larger villages (in this case there’s even a crazy golf).

Vincelottes

The landscape in this area is very much shaped to the needs of the largely Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes which seem to like the stoniest, sunniest slopes. Villages nestle in valleys, while the hillsides are left uninhabited to be dotted with vines on small parcels of land in just the right places. There’s a great deal of science in where those places are, and where they are not seems to be planted with rows of cherry trees. The next village along the Yonne to Vincellottes, Bailly, is home to the production of the local Crémant de Bourgogne, a tasty sparkling wine, in the extensive cave system of what was once an underground quarry. Pontigny Abbey acquired the quarry in the 12^th century and its limestone supplied some of France’s greatest works of architechture – Chartres Cathedral, and the Panthéon and Notre-Dame in Paris. In the first half of the 20^th century the caves became a mushroom farm and since 1972 it has been used for wine, with accompanying tastings and tours, which take in the many works of art sculpted into the limestone walls as part of annual competitions held from 1993 to 2002.

The Chablis Landscape

A foray into the village of Bailly provided us with the opportunity to visit the gallery of local artist Georges Hosotte in a converted chapel. His watercolours and oils of local villages and landscapes really captured the colours of this area, with soft creamy yellow stone and a hundred different greens among the hillsides. A print would set you back between €150 to €300, with an original going up to the sort of prices you might pay for a new car.

On Sunday we all went to nearby Chablis where there was a substantial market. Lots of charcuterie, with local speciality andouillette – a tripe sausage delicacy for those who have a liking for a wider range of meaty products.  Another regional speciality which could be seen on the bread stalls and in all the local bakers is gougère, a kind choux pastry bun which is flavoured with cheese, ham or even andouillette. Then, of course, there’s the Chablis, which you can pick up for close to €9 a bottle at the cheapest end, though you might want to try other whites, such as nearby Chitry, which (unless you have a spectacularly fine palate) you will think very similar for only half the price. Chablis also has some very interesting buildings, including a mediaeval synagogue in Jew’s Street and a fine stone washing building which is typically Bergundian.

Chablis Market

On Monday we visited Auxerre. We had a quick tour of Jill’s barge and then had a very leisurely breakfast catching up on all the gossip from school. The centre of Auxerre looked impressive from the marina on the Yonne, with its cathedral and two large churches dominating the hill above the river, and we eventually tore ourselves away from the cafe and made our way up the narrow streets lined with mediaeval buildings, passing under the old city gate, the Tour de l’Horloge, with its restored painted clock face, to reach the newer commercial centre.

Auxerre

Tuesday was castle day, of one kind or another, the first being Guédelon, the pet project of a chap called Michel Guyot, who, in 1998, decided that he wanted to build a mediaeval castle from scratch using the same techniques and materials that would have been available in the Middle Ages. The project is based on archaeological studies of the castle at St Fargeau and draws on illuminated manuscripts for much of the knowledge about past artisan skills. As a piece of historical research it has shed light on the work of mediaeval stonemasons, carpenters, tilers, blacksmiths, dyers and ropemakers, to name but a very few of the crafts going on there. The stone to build the castle, the wood for scaffolding and even the clay for the tiles is all found in situ, and although they have to make some concessions to modern health and safety laws, the techniques by and large replicate those used in the 13^th century. As a business enterprise it must have gone beyond what was originally intended as it was obviously thriving, with about twenty coaches from visiting school parties plus many cars, so I guess that once completion is reached in about 2023, it will continue to develop.

Stepping back in time at Guédelon

We had lunch in a fabulous village restaurant in St Armand en Puissaye, which is to pottery what Hay on Wye is to books, although the claims to pottery fame can be traced back to the 14^th century. The village also has a Renaissance chateaux which houses a museum of pottery and a tourist office which has been converted from the village wash stand. In the afternoon we visited our final castle of the day, the 13^th century chateaux at Ratilly, which was like stumbling across something out of a fairy-tale, hidden, as it was, along narrow country lanes and behind high, ivy covered walls. It was delightful, with a country garden in its moat and a thriving pottery along one side of its inner courtyard, complete with house martins flitting in and out of the building. One interesting feature was the pigeon house, a circular building some twenty foot high with hundreds of holes in the walls for roosting birds. In order to collect the eggs, or the odd bird for pigeon pie, a flimsy ladder stretched up into the gaping space, which was attached to a central axis and could be pushed round the walls to help speed up the whole process.

You first – Ratilly’s would be egg collectors

Wednesday evening saw us in the next village along the Yonne, Cravant, passing by more caves beside the road which were used during the war for building aircraft. The village was the scene of an important battle in the Hundred Years War where the Scots, fighting on the French side, made a stand against the English and suffered massive losses. The village’s defences are evident in walls, gate towers and a large stone fortified tower. You can visit the latter for €5, which is worth it to glimpse the life of the 75 year old woman who lives there. She will explain its history as a prison, show you the oubliette, the carvings made by prisoners and take you into the roof space, and you will wonder how she manages on her own amongst the artefacts collected during a lifetime of fashion design with the lack of central heating, no obvious bathroom or kitchen facilities and a building in constant need of restoration funds. If you plan to visit in a motorhome there is parking for a night’s stop-over beside the tower and the wonderful stone washing building, but if you pop over the bridge you’ll find a much pleasanter place to spend the night in the car-park by the canal.

Cravant – Fortified Tower and Canal

Rob’s bike ride -

We’d always planned that, while Lesley caught up with her friends, I would take my bike and go off exploring for a few days, and this I eventually did on Tuesday 1^st June.   I headed first south to the Morvan natural park, which is an area of thickly wooded hills standing above the surrounding Burgundy countryside.   No vineyards up here, but endless forest, both natural deciduous woodland and pine plantations, and isolated grey-stone villages that live off a mixture of logging and tourism.  The landscape reminded me at many points of the English-Welsh borderlands in the UK, around say Clun or Welshpool.

Morvan Scenery

The rain arrived on Tuesday evening, and I put up my new one-man tent for the first time in a pine wood near the village of St Agnan.   Despite constant drizzle I had a comfortable and dry night, although the tree cover and dull sky combined to make for a very dark morning.

Rob’s new sleeping arrangements

On Wednesday I zigzagged south through the Morvan, under gradually brightening skies.  It was in fact a fine day for cycling, until late in the day when I descended to the lower, more open country near Autun and suddenly rode into a north-easterly wind impeding my progress.  My one other bugbear was my new saddle, which is clearly not adapting to me after several days of riding, nor I to it, and by late afternoon I was having to make regular pauses just to relieve the pressure.   Something must be done!

I camped that night by a wood east of Autun, in an idyllic spot from where I could see the setting sun.  I watched huge mayflies drifting in the mild twilight breeze, and learnt that deer can make a sort of muffled barking sound as they dart for the shelter of the trees in the evening gloom.

On my last day, Thursday 3^rd June, I turned northwards to the Côte d’Or and finally Dijon.   The Côte is a ridge of high ground, its western side covered in dense woodland and cut by steep-sided and cliff-topped valleys, but which hosts the most exclusive vineyards in Burgundy on its gentler eastern slopes. I saw both – the west made for more inspiring cycling but the east was a fine end to the trip, as I approached Dijon through the pristine fields of vines and well-maintained villages such as Gevrey-Chambertin and Couchey.   I had only time for a lightning scoot round old Dijon, but it looked like a very attractive city and one to return to.   My trip finished with a two-hour train ride back to Auxerre.

Dijon

And the van -

Our week in Burgundy was more or less opened and closed by repairs to the van; on the Monday I (Rob) took it in to a Renault dealer in Auxerre to assess the damage to the wing mirror, after our scrape with the Dutch bus, and on the Friday I took it in again for the work to be carried out.   We also needed a replacement motor for the window-raising mechanism in the passenger door, and the bill for both set us back by €570.   There was not much alternative, as both repairs needed to be done.

The Burgundian countryside – up close and personal

Across Germany to Alsace

Lesley’s bit –

By late afternoon on a Sunday you’d expect car parks and camping places to start emptying out as people make their way home. Folks on the German side of the Moselle seemed to have no intention of going anywhere other than to the nearest bar. Everywhere had a distinct holiday feel. The sprawl of campsites we had seen from Luxemburg turned out to be large and still packed, so we headed away from the Moselle to Saarburg.

From a whistle-stop drive through it looked pretty enough in a done-up for hoards of tourists way - castle perched on crags, cable-car to the heights, lots of signs advertising Kaffee und Kuchen and Biergartens - but parking a van in busy tourist areas isn’t like parking a car. We couldn’t squeeze the van into a great little parking spot by the river and luckily the very unattractive parking for mobile homes was choked with massive beasts of vans, so we didn’t stop there either.

Not stopping anywhere was taking its toll on Rob and low blood sugar grumps were starting up. After being fed some bread and sundry charcuterie products we stopped at a bar in Saarhölzbach for a glass of white Saar wine.

We followed the pretty wooded valley of the Saar and then headed off further into Germany towards the dam at Losheim am See, where we knew there was a campsite. What we found there instead was a perfect spot for the night on a grassed car park overlooking the high plateau (€2 for 24 hr parking), alongside a few other vans.

Rob’s bit –

We set off again from our perfect free camping pitch on the Monday morning, and drove down into Losheim village to do some shopping.  However, it was like a ghost town and it dawned on us that today (24^th May) was Whitsun, and a bank holiday in much of Europe.  Here bank holidays, like Sunday trading laws, are still rigidly observed, and not a shop had its shutters open.

We had decided to push on to Alsace in eastern France, and took one of our rare trips on a motorway to cross the industrial heart of the Saarland (though it actually looked quite wooded and just ordinarily suburban from this route) to the Pfälzer Wald area of Germany that borders Alsace.  The town of Pirmasens looked interesting, with grand spa-type buildings in a very red stone, but everything was still resolutely closed and we just passed through.  The countryside got ever prettier as the road climbed into the forests (the ‘Wald’ of Pfälzer Wald) and we started to pass through villages of Hansel-and-Gretel style half timbered houses that looked so archetypically German.  

 

Wissembourg’s timber framed houses

The French town of Wissembourg lay only 3km beyond the border.  Here too it was the Whitsun holiday, and a kind of fair had taken over the town centre.  Shops may have been shut, but the streets were full of stands serving local food specialities along with local white wines, and people strolled in the evening sunshine from one to another.  We could hardly not join in. I will mention just tarte flambée / Flamkuchen, a kind of thin pizza topped with onions, bacon and cream, as well as some little steamed dumplings served with apple purée, whose name escapes me but which were great.

Cooking flamkuchen

Wissembourg looks thoroughly German.  It was clearly a wealthy town in times gone by (and I would say still is), and its centre is lined with magnificent half-timbered houses, in the style called Fachwerk in German.  The German-ness is no coincidence, for despite a gradual integration into the French realm after the middle ages, much of Alsace remained culturally and linguistically German well into the 20^th century.  It was absorbed into Germany itself between 1870 and 1919, and again briefly in the early 1940s, and it is probably only since 1945 that its identification with the French state has become complete.  Many people speak a German dialect at home, and you can sometimes hear people in shops or cafés switch between Alsatian and French mid-sentence.

Rob and the Satnav –

I have become a fan of Satnavs.  I am not normally an early adopter of new technology, preferring to wait until it is mature, a whole lot cheaper and its usefulness has been proven.  In planning this trip I was heard to say that a satnav seemed like a ‘bloody expensive alternative to a road atlas and a bit of common sense’.

However on the Tuesday I went out on my bike, crossing back into Germany from our campsite near Lembach (French side, though you’d hardly know), and I took a route on forestry tracks that climbed steeply through the Pfalz woodlands.  High in the woods, several tracks converged, and an hour’s riding on twisting sandy paths rutted by logging lorries only brought me round in a big circle.  So I switched on the Garmin (OK, Garmintrude to us), and it (she) led me straight onto the right route out, as well as telling me my altitude and giving me a map of the whole area.  And all this without a paved road in sight.  Later on though as I rode back up the steep hills towards Lembach she did ask me if I wanted to re-class myself as a pedestrian and I was slightly hurt.

Bobenthal in the Pfalzer Wald (Germany)

The hills of Alsace are known as the Vosges, and we spent the next two rainy days slowly meandering southwards along backroads through them.  

 

Vosges morning walk near Fleckenstein

Near the present-day German border are a number of ruined mediaeval castles set on impressive towering crags above the forest, such as Fleckenstein and Wildstein, and we passed these, as well as a much more recent line of fortifications which crossed our path several times between Lembach and Dambach.  The Maginot Line was a vast chain of state-of-the-art fortresses constructed by the French military in the 1930s, to guard against any future threat from Germany, after the bitter experiences of 1870 and 1914-18.   Enormous reinforced concrete bunkers and gun emplacements rise –just – out of forested slopes, but these are mere entrance points for a much larger subterranean network that allowed munitions to be stored and moved around to bombard the invaders from many different hilltops.  A fine idea, only with one major flaw: what if the invaders simply came another way ? This is what happened in 1940, as Hitler invaded the low countries instead as a stepping stone into France, therefore bypassing the new defences.  You might wonder why France left its Belgian frontier so lightly defended when the Germans had already been this way in 1914...

  

Fortifications on the Maginot Line

  

We were too late for the guided tours at the Four à Chaux complex near Lembach, but stumbling upon these weather–stained concrete hulks in the woods was in itself impressive.

Lesley’s bit –

We drove through a lot of forest. As we drive around we occasionally ask each other questions which we can’t answer and we say “we must check that out”, but then we forget about them and never do. My check out for Alsace would be how the landscape has changed over the centuries. These forests are largely managed pine, and there seems to be a saw-mill in just about every village, so this industry is a big employer. From the amount of timber framing about, the area has obviously been big on wood for hundreds of years, but the old houses are not pine. I’d expect them to be oak, but as oak, while still present, is not the main wood in these parts, so have these pine forests replaced older oak ones? Must check that out.

 

Woodlands viewed from Wildstein

We stopped in the larger town of Saverne because it was our best bet for a wider range of shops. Our guide book didn’t really rate the town for its tourist attractions yet we found it very pleasant, with the timbers of some of the old houses carved in the most intricate fashion, and the centre being notable for a deep lock carrying up to two pleasure boats or barges at a time up or down the Marne Rhine Canal. There was also a château – Château des Rohan – built apparently by one of the Rohans who was prince-bishop at the time. This, however, means nothing to us. What time? Who were these Rohans? (assuming they were nothing to do with the Riders of Rohan from Lord of the Rings) Must check that out.

 

View from Saverne’s Lock

The tourist office in Saverne had free wifi (ask for a session longer than their standard twenty minutes as they can give 2 hour passes). It is worth checking out tourist offices then, as not all McDonalds do have it. We can get most basic e-mails checked and sent and a blog entry uploaded in about an hour, but we are not getting time to just sit and browse, so none of our questions get checked out. This is quite a frustrating aspect of our travels. Being used to constant broadband at home and work, we have been too used to instant communication with friends and family, and we are missing being able to find quick answers to our where’s, what’s and why’s.

 

Timber framing and tiled roofs in Woerth

Rob again –

Alsace is known for its white wines, which are rather unusual in France as the style resembles more closely their German neighbours, with grapes such as riesling, edelzwicker or gewürztraminer, as well as the more usual pinot blanc and gris.

We spent our last day, Friday 28^th May, in Alsace in the wine-growing areas at the foot of the Vosges hills.   We stopped in the small towns of Rosheim and Barr, both full of gorgeous half-timbered Fachwerk houses and reeking of old Germany.   In Rosheim we found a vintner advertising dégustations – tastings – of their wines, and we came away with bottles of riesling, gewürztraminer and dry muscat wines, as well as the sparkling crémant which particularly appealed to Lesley’s palate.

  

More timber framing in Rosheim and Barr

Barr had a well positioned camping by a school, just a stone’s throw from the town centre, and this allowed us to walk in with Charlie and have a drink – local wines, what else ? – and a meal of more local delights, before retiring to the van to finish up yesterday’s wine.

 

Saturday morning market in Barr

Luxemburg and the Moselle

Rob –

Next door to the Belgian Ardennes lies Luxemburg.  This little country was rather a blank in my map of Europe,  being surrounded by much bigger neighbours and not really on the route to anywhere, but it was the natural next place, and the chance for me to add the last one to my ‘been to’ list in Western Europe.

Our route through Luxemburg - with bike ride (and return by train)

The border with Belgium was unmarked, except that the roadside trees suddenly started to sport white rings at headlamp height.  The same high rolling countryside and thick woods continued, making northern Luxemburg a most attractive area.  It is a linguistically confused country though, where officialdom writes in French – including all road signs and public notices - while newspapers write in German with random articles in French, and the populace almost all use a strong dialect of German – known as Letzebuergisch – amongst themselves.

The Lëtzebuergisch language

The small town of Clervaux had a large castle and a nice location but not much else, whilst in Wiltz, Garmintrude began to go mad, trying to send us up no-entry streets and dead-ends, and then directing us up ever steeper and narrower alleys when we refused to obey.   Maps and signposts proved far safer, but she wouldn’t have it and kept telling us to U-turn or take farm tracks for miles as we progressed down the correct and obvious route.

We stopped for two nights on a campsite by the river Sûre (French name) or Sauer (German name) near the pretty castle-topped village of Esch-sur-Sûre.  This is a popular holiday area, and the lovely wooded valley was lined with campsites.   Ours, which had been so quiet on a Thursday night, suddenly filled with German, Dutch and Luxemburger campers on Friday, as people took advantage of the scorching weekend weather.

Camping by the Sure

Summer arrived in earnest during our stay by the Sûre/Sauer, as the wind dropped and the sun reigned unopposed.  Out came our shorts, and we had the first barbecues of the trip, in the little fold-away brazier we’d bought just as an afterthought the day before we left the UK.

I went out on my bike one day to visit Luxemburg city, some 50km away.  It was an up-and-down ride, but along good and (mostly) low-traffic roads.  Unfortunately the city itself didn’t impress me much – it smacked too much of modern international blandness, many pavement cafes but little that was really unique, and even its buildings were unremarkable.  The one point in which it was notable though was its 18^th century ramparts, towering massively above a deep gorge.  At their foot lay a small neighbourhood called Grund, now somewhat bohemian in character, which, from its narrow cobbled streets below, offered a fine perspective of the fortifications.

Luxemburg city ramparts from Grund

On the third day – Saturday 22^nd May – we moved on, crossing Luxemburg (it doesn’t take long!) to the Moselle valley in the east, and stopped for the night on a carpark by the river in the village of Ehnen, in the heart of Luxemburg’s vineyard area.  This carpark had become a sort of unofficial aire for motorhomes.  A Dutch couple were here when we arrived, and by nightfall we were six vehicles.    The two of us sampled local Luxemburg white wines at a nearby bar.  I for one had never suspected that Luxemburg had any wines !

The Moselle wine route

Lesley’s bit –

Another day – another car park! One with an impressive aspect though, beside a large park right on the banks of the Moselle, with its massive barges, cars parked on their roofs, sailing past all hours of the day and night, carrying coal, scrap metal and sundry other heavy loads.

Charlie dog watching a barge on the Moselle - he's impressed - we can tell!

Rob was woken up around dawn to an apparently loud noise, which failed to register with me at all. Fearing a Luxemburg SWAT squad come to move on the merry band of motorhomers parked up for the night he got up to investigate, only to find it was an incredibly low flying helicopter going about its morning acrobatic crop dusting of the vines. Like a mad man he got up to take photos.

Spraying the vines

As it was Sunday, families soon began to set up camp in the park, staking out areas with BBQs, awnings, tables and chairs. Many of the groups seemed to be Portuguese. We are not sure why this particular area has pulled its migrant workers from Portugal, but they seem pretty settled. Portuguese can be heard in the streets in every town we passed through. In fact, the local patisserie in Ehnan was Portuguese and we breakfasted on typical bolos filled with sugary custard and coated with icing and almonds.

Morning on the Moselle

Boy was it a hot day. We hate driving on hot days. Rob behind a wheel, watching cyclists out on the roads, gets into a sour and resentful mood on hot days. So why on earth did we move on? We’d kind of hoped to do a bit of wine tasting, but the vineyards offering tastings were not open in Luxemburg. Probably just as well – a downside of being in a van is passing all the dégustations and knowing you’re just not going to be able to partake. Now if only we could manage to spit out the wine into the buckets provided... The trouble was that Rob had set his heart on a mini wine tour of this region, having once met a cycle tourist who recommended a bike as the perfect way to make a wine tour of the Moselle. All we could really do was decide to make a determined effort to plan for a proper wine tasting on our return through this area in a few weeks time. Maybe I could hire a bike for the flat stretch and we could do a mini wine cycle tour for just a few miles? Charlie could trot sedately by my side until I fall off drunk.

A perfect cycle route alongside the Moselle

Nothing was open in Luxemburg, but it was Sunday. However, nothing much had been open on Saturday, or on Friday for that matter and it begged the question of where do they buy their food? We hadn’t seen much in the way of food shops at all – small or large. Lots of incredibly clean streets, lots of smart clothes shops, masses of petrol stations serving lengthy queues of Germans filling up on much cheaper fuel (€1 a litre here for diesel)- but no food shops. Are they disguised?

We had seen no campsites on the Luxemburg side of the Moselle, but sprawling along the German bank there were loads, so we had headed that way, ending our brief affair with Luxemburg.