To Mâcon

May 13, 2022

The crow collective is up early again this morning, encouraging us to hit the road. We’re in no hurry though - we’ve a short, fairly easy ride on tap, and our hotel isn’t taking guests until four. Plus, there’s the weather which is unstable today with a chance of rain - sometime during the day, but opinions vary. So it’s a matter of making our best guess at choosing the window with the best chance of staying dry. Leaving at about 10:30 looks right to us, with the idea that we might make it in to Mâcon at twoish and plan on finding a cafe or a bench by the river depending on the weather situation until our room comes available.

It’s roughly two miles from our hotel to our crossing of the Saone. In those miles Villefranche does its best to encouraging us to return, tempting us with an assortment of streets clogged with traffic and confusing bike lanes that disappear at the wrong time. It fails to change our feelings about the place though. We might make it back to Beaujolais again, but not to this town.

Across the river, we’re soon climbing away from it on a quiet road, leaving the traffic well behind. We’re back in the Ain again, that diverse department that begins at the Saone and extends east to the Swiss border.

There’s a greenway available for today’s ride, following the east bank of the Saone nearly all the way to Mâcon. It’s a continuation of the one we rode up from Lyon, so we have experience with it and know that it’s unlikely to actually be green. Brown, dusty, with the air filled with gnats and cottonwood fluff, more likely. So we’re not doing that again. Instead I’ve stared at the map and picked out a promising course through the backroads up above the river, hoping it’s as quiet and pastoral as it looks like it could be.

It is. It’s an excellent ride for the next 25 miles, until finally dropping back to the river a few miles south of Mâcon. Open, rolling country that gives us good views and except for the high formation visible across the river reminds me a bit of the Midwest. The weather conditions make us anxious most of the way that they’ll turn foul and leave us drenched, but ain fact they’re perfect. It’s overcast and significantly cooler today, a welcome change from the hotter days we’ve been experiencing lately.

Looking across the Saone to Beaujolais and the country we were biking through yesterday. That mound in the center is Mont Brouilly again.

In the Ain. Most of the day was on delightful empty roads like this. just our kind of ride - short but sweet.

Some of the pastures and fields have what look like they could be scarecrows scattered across them.

Another documentation failure. I thought for sure I could figure out later where this was.

We had lunch in a pretty public park in Thoissey. An interesting place, with a fenced pond and field filled with geese, chickens, goats, and this charming thing. The park is also a small arboretum, with its diverse hardwoods labeled - sweet gum, silver maple, yellow poplar, black locust.

We dropped back to the river greenway about three miles before Macon, finding it as we last saw it - brown, dusty and rough. It turned to pavement after a mile, just long enough to reinforce how much better our route for the day was.

We arrived in Mâcon about 3:30, and we’re instantly impressed with the place. Maybe Villefranche set us up to be easily satisfied, but we were attracted by its long riverside promenade that fronts the entire town. That, and by the fact that the bridge crossing the river has a wide, safe shoulder wide enough that you can actually bike on it! Then too, we enjoyed sitting outside at a waterfront cafe having a cold beverage while we passed an idle half hour waiting for check-in at the hotel.

Despite its late check in, we very much like the Hotel Concorde and the people running it. We’re in a room on the back side opening on to a large garden-like yard. Quiet, very peaceful, no crows. We’ll be here two nights.

Mâcon ahead. How nice to see a town on the Saone actually be on the Saone.

Pont Saint Laurence was constructed in the 1100’s, replacing the wooden one built here by the Romans when they invaded Gaul.

The Saint Laurent Bridge, with Saint-Laurent-Sur-Saone sitting on an island on the opposite bank. The bridge has joined the two communities for over a thousand years.

In Place de la Barre, a sculpture of a pair of grape harvesters. The square is noteworthy for its position in the Second World War: the Nazis and gestapo had a command post on one side of the square while members of the Resistance met in a hotel and cafe on the opposite side and plotted actions against them.

The Maison de Blois (the house of wood), built between 1490 and 1510 and the oldest house in town. We’re booked for dinner tomorrow in the restaurant below.

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Ride stats today: 34 Miles, 1,500’; for the tour: 1,748 miles, 88,700’

Today's ride: 34 miles (55 km)
Total: 1,748 miles (2,813 km)

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Rich FrasierScott, the Ain is noteable for one trivial thing. It’s department number 1 of France. Look at the car license plates - right side usually will show the department number that the car is from. It’s how French drivers determine who’s local and who’s a “foreigner”. Before the EU set license plate rules, the department number was the last two digits of the plate number. Nowadays it’s part of the frame.
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1 year ago

Scott AndersonTo Rich FrasierHey, thanks! That’s nice to know. It makes me feel a little more French with that bit of arcana under my belt. It also piques my curiosity to wonder how many of the 106 departments we’ve rolled our wheels through by now. At a quick glance it looks like we’ve seen over half of them. I’ll have to set it aside as a rainy day project to get an accurate count.
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1 year ago