Despite our limited budget and the high price of food in France, we’re eating well. Muesli is hard to come by and we usually have to seek out the “bio” section of the supermarket to find one that is just a nice normal muesli and not some over-sweetened “croustillant” variety. So, the day begins with grapefruit or orange juice, muesli and then some cheap supermarket basic crepes Bretagne (€0.76 for a dozen!) with jam. We lunch on a baguette with either pate or cheese with cucumber and lettuce. These travel surprisingly well in the sweaty depths of the panniers…in fact a basic camembert seems greatly improved by a day or two in the bags. Pate is purchased in small tins, one of which does us for a lunch. The cucumber and lettuce travel in a string bag strapped on top of the rear rack and seem to last very well there.
Dinner is either pasta or rice with either a cream or tomato sauce, meat and vegetables. French supermarkets offer a fabulous little 20cl carton of UHT cream that travels well in our bags and makes a delicious sauce. The meat portion is usually dried sausage as, again, it travels well in sweaty bags, but occasionally we’ve been to the supermarket late in the day and bought some portions of frozen fish, which are delicious in a cream sauce seasoned with the dried seaweed we bought back in Roscoff. We also had a treat one evening eating “pea surprise”…the surprise being we hadn’t known we were having fresh peas until we found some growing mingled with barley and poppies at the edge of a field. Keith reckoned no farmer would have sown their crop in such a manner and thus these were self-seeded peas and thus fair for the picking. In just a few minutes we had enough for two meals and they were delicious. Our wine requirements, when not treating ourselves to a more expensive bottle purchased during a tasting, our served by a wide selection of €1.60 bottles of Cotes du Rhone, Bordeaux or Beaujolais.
We left the Loire in a pensive spirit and headed alongside the Canal du Centre into Burgundy territory where we were looking forward to expanding our palates with more “degustation” sessions. The wide, sandy flood plain & golden arable land of the Loire became a greener and more rolling landscape. We approached Beaune, in the heart of the Bourgogne wine region, and every inch of land was devoted to the vine, far more exclusively than in any of the Loire wine regions we’ve cycled through.
Sadly our limited wine knowledge left us a little embarrassed when we strolled into the first vineyard and discovered most of their bottles cost the same as our entire day’s budget for food, accommodation and everything. We explained our limited means and the lady of the house kindly gave us a guided tour of her cellars and a couple of tastings. She had wines dating back to 1917 and which cost over €400 a bottle. The condition of a wine of such vintage can’t be guaranteed, so if anyone wants to buy a bottle the lady lays on a sumptuous meal for them at her house and the bottle is then opened. If it has spoiled then she has recourse to her cellar to open a different bottle. We were taken aback initially at the condition of the cellar….mould draped the ceiling and covered the bottles to a depth of a centimetre or more….but apparently this is because wines should be stored in damp places to stop the corks drying out. We’d known that the corks shouldn’t be allowed to dry out, but hadn’t appreciated just how damp and dank the ideal cellar would look.
Dole Church
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me! We celebrated my 39th birthday by treating ourselves to a night in a campsite (showers!!) and a meal out (our first non-campsite meal) in the well-preserved old town of Dole, birthplace of Louis Pasteur, which is dominated by a huge cathedral that imposes itself above the maze of 16th & 17th century streets that jumble up the steep slopes from the canal to foot of the cathedral. The weather had been overcast during the day and in the evening a huge storm descended. Luckily we just made it back to the tent after our night out when the storm broke, and we stayed cosy and dry listening to the rain clattering off the canvas and the cacophony of staccato calling from the frogs in the adjacent canal.
The scenery changed yet again as we made our way along the Doubs. Densely forested slopes rose immediately from the canalside with pretty brick villages and gaudily tiled ‘cloche’ bell-towers appearing magically from amidst the foliage.
Doubs Valley
The Doubs river and Rhone\Rhine canal seem to run adjacent to each other and often intermingle, with boats being directed to the most suitable waterway as required. We’d spotted some huge cargo barges and wondered how on earth they could get through the locks…the boats looked to be much bigger than the lock. We were both intrigued therefore when we saw one of these leviathans of the waterway entering into a diminutive lock. It was very impressive. The huge barge had to get absolutely lined up before inching forward with about 5 cm to spare on either side between his huge bulk and the walls of the lock. Once in with the gates shut, there was perhaps a metre to spare at either end. As the water rushed in the barge driver had to keep his engines ticking over to counter the rush of water into the small space remaining at the front, and inexorably the barge rose without hitting the side once. Very impressive. The couple working the barge accepted our admiration for their boat-control skills and told us they were carrying 180 tonnes of sunflower seeds to be turned into oil. We saw them a couple more times over the next few days and waved enthusiastically at each other, but didn’t find out where they’d come from or were going to at their sedate and frequently lock-interrupted pace.
The weather remained a little unfavourable and we arrived in Besancon dripping wet and took refuge in a warm cafe for an extravagant brunch. There’s a citadel up on a huge rocky outcrop and the canal goes underneath it in a tunnel. This pleased Keith, who enjoyed pedalling through it. I enjoyed the respite from the rain, which pools unpleasantly in your lap on the recumbent seat.
We’d hoped to go to the Peugeot museum in Montbeliard, but a more pressing need was to locate the Decathlon to buy gas, and then we noticed the black clouds rolling in so, as it was already after 6 and the museum most likely about to close, we started to head out of town in search of a suitable camping spot. The decision was made for us when the black clouds caught up with us and I just had time to sling the flysheet up whilst Keith put the covers on the panniers, and we then huddled in our hastily assembled shelter for an hour before there was sufficient lull to scamper out and retrieve some crisps and dip, and then later, in a more substantial lull, to reposition and assemble the tent properly and get some dinner cooked. It was still raining the next morning, but eased off by lunchtime when we reached Mulhouse and ate our bread and cheese in front of the hideous pink town hall.
Mulhouse Town Hall
Our last afternoon in France brought a real treat with it, as we pedalled along by the peaceful canal, I saw a large, sleek brown shape slip from the bank into the water. Presuming it to be an otter, we stopped and watched it swimming away from us, expecting it to disappear from view any moment. To our amazement, it then turned and swam towards us and came right over to where we stood on the shore. As it approached and raised its grizzled, whiskery face from the water, instead of the broad, flat skull and carnivorous teeth of an otter, we saw a rather large guinea-pig-like visage complete with rodent incisors. The tail was round in profile, not flattened like a beaver’s and I think it might have been a coypu as I believe there are some that were farmed for fur now living wild in France. There was a whole family of them, large and small, and we watched them for 10-15 minutes before continuing on our way to Basel.
threewheeling 