Whanau are here and in order to enable them to get their French legs and recover from jet lag we decide to drive the “beautiful village” circuit on the tourist map. The countryside is really pretty and truth be told its a few days ago now and I am struggling to remember. I blame said whanau for keeping us busy doing all the “ings”. Seeing and doing and eating and drinking and talking and lots of other verbs.
There is a “fairytale” castle I want to visit. I have seen it online and it looks beautiful. The only trouble is when we get there it’s overgrown, run down and looking very unloved. The drawbridge is fenced off and we cant get near. So we wander down a dead end path and back and stop at the end of road to take a picture.
We drive around some more looking for some lunch but alas we are too late. Lunch is strictly 12 until 2 on a Monday and no-on will take us. We call upon a bar in a small village square and the man in charge (I deduce this by him being the one sitting on a chair, next to the door, smoking ) waves his hand at the young waiter when he tells us no we are closed. He tells the young waiter we we can have the plat du jour only. The young looks annoyed at his lost opportunity to call it an afternoon and the smoking man tells us it’s tre bien. So we order it and sit down. It is good it’s got gourgette and sausage and salad and all is well with the world.
The next day: We have booked bikes, electric ones of course, to do the bike trail through the vines. Pom bikes is the name of the company we used and they were great. They dropped the bikes off to us and the day was a “pinch me day”. Cycling through the vines, past the foilies, past the chateau, past the windmill, it just felt good. Pinch me, I am here, I am grateful.
We stop for lunch in Santenay and then cut across to cycle the canal back to Chagny where the plan is to catch a train back to Mersault and buy supplies for dinner before heading home.
We reach Chagny and are under pressure as we are on the wrong side of the tracks and we cant find a way over. We finally get to where we are going and the train that is going our way pulls up. WE haven’t yet bought a ticket and the doors look really high. We follow a lady with a bike to the bike carriage, which has space for two bikes, she has one we have four. It’s three steps high and electric bikes are very heavy. The door keeps trying to shut on us. We form a chain gang. One hold the door, two grab the front wheel from three and manoeuvre into the carriage, three push. Four (that’s me) say “hurry up, hurry up, quick, quick, hurry up, the whistles gone, its gunna go, its gunna go”.
All onboard squished into the vestibule I then try to buy tickets online. It wont let me so and chucks me out twice when I finally get to the end. I decide it’s probably a dumb idea to buy tickets for a train that has already left the station so I try and buy tickets for the next train at that station and that works. Hoorah. I look up from my phone as we have just arrived at a station and ask where we are. “Beaune” comes the reply. “Get off”. Get off”. Quick, quick, hurry up, hurry up, the whistles gone, its gunna go, its gunna go”. Turns out we are on the big speedy train not the regional one and by the time I had bought the tickets we had already gone past our stop and next stop was Dijon.
We head across the road to a dodgy pub with sticky floors and regather our equilibrium and decide we will bike home the ten kms to Mersault rather than try to get on another train. It’s a quick trip and a lot less stress and as we are nearly home I use the full advantage of the electric bike. Vroom, vroom. Veet, Veet.
Once home we bike into town but again have no joy with the village shops as they close early on a Wednesday afternoon. Who knew? No worries we go home for a freshen up and will go out for dinner later. Later as we are turned away from the gorgeous little bistro above (they are fully booked). We end up down the road at the only one we get into and there is a reason it had spare tables. We had a very average meal but a great day and a very enjoyable evening despite the meal.