Let's Travel Europe: A memorable day

Saturday 16^th July

It’s been an interesting few days but we are managing to relax a little as was intended.

The door on the right is our gite for the week. We have stayed in 3 very different gites. The first was a renovated dairy so a lot of the old timbers remained, the second was probably a fairly typical older style french house and this one is a very modern fit out in an older building.

Wednesday we headed in to Bourg en Bresse, the nearby big town, to find out the information on the Tour de France for the stage on Sunday. We visited this town last time we were here and it rang no bells with either of us. We searched for the tourist information centre which seemed to have us driving round in ever decreasing circles, then it bucketed rain. We finally found it but it was closed for lunch so we found a restaurant for lunch while we waited for it to re-open, and waited out the rain. The tourist info office had all the information we needed to plan our day Sunday, so we headed home via the supermarket for supplies for a few days in our gite.

Thursday we took ourselves off to the medieval village of Perouges as recommended by the tourist office. This village is still truly medieval and doesn’t seem to have been tarted up too much for the tourist trade. All the village roads and paths had been laid with stones from the river so there were some real ankle turners if you didn’t watch where you stepped. It was quite a quaint little village but not quite up there with some that we have seen. Maybe we have been spoilt.

The main entrance to the medieval village of Perouges.

This lime tree is in the centre of the village square in Perouges, and was planted in 1747.

From Perouges we headed out to reconnoitre the Tour de France route for Sunday and work out a good spot for spectating. Sunday is a mountain stage and we have picked to go to one of the early climbs that is only about 20k from here – should give us a taste of the climb aspect of the tour.

Rob had read the tourist brochures and decided that the Basilica at Ars-sur-Fromans was worth a visit so yesterday (Friday) we drove to Ars – about one hour away. Whilst the village is very small is sees over 500,000 pilgrims each year and has been visited by Pope Paul II and other dignitaries. Well we arrived in this tiny village and there were camper vans everywhere. Seems like this weekend is the main pilgrimage weekend for the Catholics and they had come in droves. Made it hard to get a good look inside the church but we got in between services.

The small chapel in the village of Ars - beautiful inside.

The tile floor in the chapel - a quilt?

The basilica in Ars.

There was also a small produce market in the village so we were able to buy fruit and veg and some meat which saved us having to visit the supermarket. Some of these tiny village markets have lovely produce – it is a shame we can only buy a little.

The market in Ars - meat and cheese on the right, fruit and veg on the left - and if you didn't bring a bag there were baskets to buy.

From the town of Ars we headed to the village of Chatillon sur Chalaronne, via a tradie relais for lunch. We were only planning to drive through C sur C but ended up stopping when we found the old part of the village. This was a really pretty town with a few benefits – I needed a haircut and found a coiffure that could cut my hair ‘toute de suite’; there was a model train museum to amuse Rob while I was at the hairdressers; and there was a wool shop next door to the hairdresser. We enjoyed our visit to this village.

This is the old covered market in Chatillon sur Chalaronne and it is still used for the market every Saturday.

Pretty bridges and flower boxes in the village.

Very cute.

Just one of the model train displays.

Today (Saturday) was all about the Tour de France. We decided we needed to be at our chosen spectator point by about 12.30 before the roads were closed. Well, we got there at 11.45 and there were cars, RVs, bikes and people everywhere. The roads were due to close around 2 but nothing was due to happen here until 3.15pm. We were still able to park quite close so we settled in for a long wait – I was prepared with knitting, Sudoku and book. Rob headed out to check out the lay of the land. He returned 30 minutes later to say we had been invited to join a group of French families for lunch – they assured him they had plenty, and they did. Entrée salads and pizza, paella cooked there in a huge paella pan, fromages, gateaux, plenty of beer and wine. They were so friendly and hospitable and turned our day into one of fantastic memories.

Our hosts for the day - they were very well set up and had a prime position right on the corner.

Lunch - yum!

Waiting for action.

As for the tour – it is preceded by a caravan of sponsor cars with giveaways, but being in the back rows with the wind blowing the wrong way we didn’t really score. It’s a bit like Moomba on steroids. After the caravan it is another long wait for the actual tour and then ‘blink’ it is all over. The 2 lead riders were only a couple of seconds in front of the peloton so it really was only 5 or 10 minutes and it was all done. Then came the traffic jam as thousands of people headed away from the intersection. We hung around until the traffic cleared and helped our hosts clean up and pull down. We are ‘home’ now and dinner is done (not very hungry after all the food today). We really had a fabulous day and will remember this as one of the special days of our holiday.