Chissey en Morvan

Saturday 25 June

The Morvan is a higher plateau sort of area heading east of France, toward the Beaune Valley, Burgundy area. Its heavily wooded, ravine split, limestone country, high rainfall, but not by NZ standards, 40-70".

The drought we've been reading about is a tinker, they had no rain in April, some in May, and June is back to normal, in fact for the equivalent of our Dec its quite cool here, I've been wearing my jacket every day, and towards evening its been verging bf cold enough on the bike.

The pastures are fairly summer coloured though, but the crops I've passed certainly dont look starved for moisture.

This B&B, Villa des Roches, like the others so far, is rural, and tranquility is the word I've woken up with in my head as best describing my leading impression so far. There's a couple of pheasants or chooks scratch around in the long grass section next door my room window overlooks, and I've heard a mob of sheep bleating somewhere in the dale.
Best bed I've encountered for some time too, luxury...

The large areas of wood here, and in all of France so far are beautiful, and like I thought in USA over the same, I'm left wondering what on earth possessed our Kiwi forefather pioneers to set to hacking down every last tree, they might have had a admirable work ethic, but in the aesthetics dept they were simply dumb bastards, and now when us later generations seek to redress the wrong, its done with pine, macro, or some other exotic, rather than the unique native species lost, and so slow growing in regeneration if so chosen.

Its been a fine and clear sunny day and I didnt feel like getting A into G at any great speed this morning, apart from tackling my laundry reqs, first washup since leaving home.

Host Richard gave me a local tour guide, a read through leaving me near gasping at the enormity of the task of coming to grips with the architecture of the region. Sensing my bewilderment, he scoffed in accord with his own frustration from tackling the same since arriving here 8 years ago, and had I considered the option of just taking a day off by the pool, with a beer?

I felt a bit of guilt at the thought of abandoning the tourist trail, which dissipated somewhat after a swim, (nice pool too), and after a beer, well, not too bad an idea at all.

So, the next couple of paragraphs will be dedicated to describing what I didnt see today...

This is the Burgundy area, leading across to the Jura mountains I'll go over tomorrow afternoon, not all that high rising to 6000' odd, but quite sharp in relief.

Ironmaking was the big deal around here, the Cistercian monks in the 12th century making the most of plentiful local iron ore and wood to stoke the furnaces and perfecting methods of hardening steel to earn a rep for fine blades, but human existence has  been traced as far back as 18k and 15k BC.

Some of the early ironwork is incredible, those 300 year old beams I mentioned a day or so back, supporting a barn roof, are held together with long steel rods with huge threaded nuts on the end that belie their age. The chain mail seen at Azincourt was made by drawing the steel into a thin wire, cut to little lengths, the ends flattened over and drilled, bent into a circle, threaded into the ring next door, and rivetted closed, and keep doing this till youve got a complete vest, head and shoulder piece, or horse cover. Armour making was a bespoke business, and far from being cumbersome, armour suits had methods of multiple plate limb articulation that ensured freedom of movement with protection from penetration at the joints.

These days trains for the TGV are built here, and notable sons of the area include, Vernier, responsible for the measuring system, Rouget de Lisle, wrote La Marseillaise, the national anthem, Pasteur, discovered vaccination and gave the world pasteurisation, and the Lumiere Bros, invented cinematography.

Then there's the wine, those 12C monks again, supplying it to royalty and nobility to establish the district reputation. For racing fans, Romanee Conti, the top NZ runner's name comes from the brew they made for Madame de Pompadour. The area's famous for its reds, Beaujolais in particular, and Chardonnay in the white wine dept. Pretty much all burgundy reds are made from pinot noir, a grape dating back to the 1300's.

To have a crack at the architecture history stuff I'd contemplated going back up the track to Vezelay, but after a swim and a beer, the 50km lost its gloss, I'd come through the village on my way here anyway and spotted the Basilique Ste Madeliene not knowing how important it was to architecture buffs. Founded in 800's AD on a former Roman site by Giraut de Roussillon, a count in Burgundy, it was soon destroyed by Vikings, of all people, coming down this far into Europe for a scrap and a bit of wench rapine, but I suppose a fair guess would be also to swipe the local sword-ware. It got rebuilt on the present hill where it could be better defended around 880 AD and the Benedictine monks installed. The place reached its heights mid 1100's when St Bernard preached  the 2nd Crusade, and for a century it sheltered the remains of Mary Magdelene, becoming a place of pilgrimage and start place of one of 4 main trade/pilgrimage routes to Spain and Santiago. Richard the Lionheart convened here with King Phillipe Auguste before departing on the 3rd Crusade, and St Fransis of Assisi chose this place for the first of his Monasteries of Minorities about 1217 AD.

It fell into disrepair and abandonment for some time, but an order of nuns inhabit the place now. Visitors are welcome to join in with Mass, so probably a good thing I didnt go do a fish out of water visit. One bone of Mary's is still on display in the crypt, and I've heard before from visitors to ancient holy sites that getting so close and personal gives one cause to credit all that bible stuff was fair go.

I had a walk through the local village instead, size of Turakina I guess, a mayor's office, a school, an hotel, and a chateau/castle sort of thing, huge, 2 towers plus a turret thing, surrounded by a 6' stone wall, been uninhabited for a while according to my host, but signs of people there doing renovations, which look like either a lifetime's labour of love, or a million dollar job.

I'd been a bit intrigued about the medieval infra-structure of France, villages, close network of roads etc, ideal if there's a breakdown in civilisation as we know it, but you'd have to fear the country is too modern now and reliant on cheap energy to go back to that sort of existence. The internet service is still dodgy though. 

There's also a shop, but it closes between 12.30 and 3.30pm when most of the tourist traffic goes through, in fact given any public holiday, or even the merest excuse, rural France will close down completely, in an effort to stop itself getting too affluent.

I stopped in at the local hotel for dinner, commencing with the normal 2 titbit dish starters, escargot entree, (snails for you unwashed lot), the veux main, (ox tongue boil-up with spud and carrot, the matron d' enquiring if I understood what I was actually ordering), followed by fromage plateau, selection from 15 or so varieties, and dessert du jour, a decent slab of berry pie, all for half the price of a couple nights ago, incl campari aperitif and a small pitcher of beaujolais, to remind myself what sipping silk is like.

Couple more gins back home with Richard, and je vais couchet.

He tells me the 65% contribution to the health system employers are required to make on wages paid, is rebated off your own business tax bill.

All business bank accounts are required to be registered with the Govt who have full eye-pry into account activities.

Jeepers...