Day Thirty Eight: Baume Les Dames to Besancon: Year 38: 2005

October 28, 2017

Flash Back to 2005:

Bobby McFerrin (Don't Worry, Be Happy) was then but 2005 was now. Dodie's Dad Walter had been a foundation of our existence. Now we would have to carry on without him. Later in the year Joni, our first born, fell ill. The day of her operation was the most gut wrenching experience for us since Ira, 20 years earlier.

Steve and Dodie sat at the threshold of years when their parents would leave but grandchildren would arrive.

By age 94 Walter grew weak and had painful ailments. Eventually he decided to fade out. He told us "growing old is not for sissies".

Dodie and her sister Karyn had well chosen words that summarized Walter's life. Except for Ira over 20 years earlier this was the first time Steve and Dodie had lost anyone so dear. Of course, there was more to come. This launched a revolving door with an older generation checking out and many new grandchildren checking in.

One of the most meaningful songs to us is "Rise Again", which we associate mostly with the Canadian east coast group The Rankin Family. The song deals with the continuity brought through children, expresses for us the cosmic significance of having them. The version of "Rise Again" that you see here below is a special one, very emotional, because it features famous Canadian east coast singers. But also we know that some of them - Rita MacNeil, and two members of the Rankin family, have tragically died.

Joni fell seriously ill and needed major surgery. We of course stuck close by her. She came out of it OK.

Joni's illness wrenched our hearts and minds. A parent's love is one of the greatest forces there is.

Robert Munsch, a Canadian writer of children's books, created Love You Forever, a short story treasured by every parent and child we know.

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Fast Forward to 2017, France:

I wrote to our friend Michel (who lives near Nantes) in the Guestbook last night that we will know we are really deep into France when breakfast drops back to just being croissant and coffee. Ok, we are really deep into France now! Plus I can see why the man from the hotel in Mulhouse felt that the standard was one croissant per person, because that is what we got today.
Even so, the proprietor lady was nice. This was also the assessment of Tricia, who wrote to say that she and Ken had also stayed at Le Bambi.

We formed a bit of a bond with the lady, who winced when she lifted Dodie's cup. She had pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve in her shoulder yesterday. So Dodie hauled out the Voltaren and massaged it into the lady's shoulder. Us old folks need to stick together - by sharing the Voltaren!

Add coffee and hot chocolate to this and you have our complete breakfast for two.

The day started as the coldest on the trip so far - 2 degrees. So for the first time we needed to put on all the pieces of cold weather gear we had brought. We almost could regret sending home our down jackets, but it was not quite that extreme. On the other hand, even though we had brought our warm gloves, our hands, and eventually feet too, still suffered.

From Baume les Dames to Besancon EV6 follows the Doubs river as it passes below rock cliffs. There are a few spots where we were on road, but overall it was a relaxing if frozen ride. Part way through something about the temperature caused a fog or mist to descend on the river, and we found we had to put on our lights for safety. The cold and foggy appearance of things was very wintry, and I found myself thinking of warm, interior!, Christmas things.

With the mist and cold, there was a wintry feel.

These thoughts helped, until before all that long we drew up under the cliffs and fortress of Bescanson. Bescanson old town is contained in a loop of the river. If you are just blasting through you can cut across the neck of the loop and go, but that would be a mistake!

Blowing past Bescanson almost happened for us, because we had misestimated how close it was to Baume les Dames, and were considering pressing on. But a stop at Tourist Information confirmed that there was no place to stay at any reasonable further distance. How lucky we were to fail at this, because Besancon is without doubt one of the most interesting and beautiful places on the entire route!

How we could have forgotten this earthshaking fact about Besancon is beyond us. We recognized the Tourist Information from "Grampies Ride Again!" alright, but when we got into town we were saying "Wow, this is great!" with entirely fresh eyes.

After some hours out in the town and now back in our room, we reread that two year old Grampies blog. It was very well written and covered the whole thing!

Well not quite the whole thing, because we have beaten those former Grampies out on at least two things. Firstly, wherever we stayed then, it could never beat where we are now: Hotel du Nord. This is smack dab in the pedestrian area old town. And I guess I will mention now that that old town is extremely large and provides a painting-like view at every turn. The buildings are large and solid, made of granite, and with windows always properly ornamented with sills and frames and mini balconies. The roofs provide a vista of chimney pots, worthy of Mary Poppins. The whole thing is virtually car free, and people walk in the middle of the street, only occasionally dodging the sleek but gentle electric trams, or busses heading up to the citadel.

The hotel put our bikes in a large garage all to themselves, and promised that we could have them back at any time whatsoever. Our room is quite large enough, and has a table and two chairs, all big enough so we can both sit at it. Another big plus, as you can see in the photo, there is a Casino supermarket next door. The supermarket is fairly large, but the checkout is comprised of a single man seated at sort of a desk. He fairly casually will take your money, and nobody is in a hurry.

Back to the hotel, the corridor outside our room was crafted by someone with who knows what in mind, or using what techniques. We say this because it wanders down to the elevator and staircase, being neither straight nor curved. And the staircase - we gave it a try from here four stories up because it looked like fun. But one flight down we took the elevator - the stairs were just too weird. How great is that!

The streets of Besancon look like a paining

Our hotel, with the critical Casino supermarket beside.

Our corridor is not (or maybe is) for drunks.

According to our previous blog, Dodie got a hold of a tourist map listing things to see in Besancon, and was threatening to try hitting them in order. But this time she had earlier spotted the existence of a "Museum of Time" that looked interesting and we focussed on that and the Saint Jean cathedral. The two happen to be on the main walking street, so joining them gave us a pretty good experience.

The Time Museum is housed in a former palace, the Granvelle Palace which was privately built in 1534. Somewhere else, just this wonderful building would be a sensation, but here it is just run of the mill.

The museum itself had a quite remarkable collection of time pieces, from renaissance pocket watches to ultra complex movements to quartz watches to 60's travelling alarms, to cesium clocks. They also deal at length with astronomical topics and calendars, the history of measuring time, the use of clocks to measure longitude at sea, and lots more. We really could not absorb it all, and especially given that we realized later we had missed an entire floor!

One thing we did not miss was the fact that the museum is probably here because Besancon historically has been a watch making centre. It had world famous companies and a school of watch making, around the turn of the 20th century. I am not sure how they are doing now, but they took a big hit when quartz movements came on the scene, and watch production then shifted to the orient.

A photo from the early 1900's shows Besancon as a hotbed of watch sales

Victor Hugo was born here and has his name on lots of places. This commemorative plate is a Sarreguimines!

A cesium clock - could be 40 or more years old by now.

The advent of quartz movements caused economic disruption in Besancon

This watch does not necessarily look it, but it was the most complicated watch in the world in 1904. It was made in Switzerland by the LeRoy company and is known as the Leroy 01. This remained the most complicated mechanical watch until 1989. It had 24 functions, and its successor had 32. Actually 32 "apps" is about the same as my current smart phone.

View of the city from the tower of the museum

Following the astronomical theme, the museum also housed a rather amazing thing - a Foucault pendulum. This is a brass ball suspended from the peak of the building on a 13 meter long steel cable, forming a pendulum. Following the idea of physicist Leon Foucault from 1851, the pendulum is made to swing back and forth, just above a horizontal circular dial. Now a pendulum it turns out always swings in the same plane as how it starts. But if you observe the ball passing over the dial for long enough, you will see it passes over progressively different sections. That is because the earth is spinning beneath the pendulum! At the latitude of Besancon, the circular dial will revolve under the pendulum completely in 32 hours. At the North Pole, it would be 24 hours. Got that?? (We didn't).

Looking down on the pendulum and disk from above.

One other interesting thing, not exactly time related, was a large 3D model of the Besancon area as it existed in 1720. Models like this were very useful in planning military operations, but we also found it useful, in planning cycling operations!

We continued up the street toward the cathedral, and stopped at the dark and ancient feeling Church of St Maurice. That could stand to reason, since a church here dates from the 4th century. However the building that is standing now was begun in 1704, making it fairly modern!

Near the cathedral, the door knocker on a church residence looks rather sad.

In this town one can afford to pooh pooh a church from 1704. Just up the street is an excavated roman theatre, and over the road to the cathedral is a Roman triumphal archway that was built in 175 a.d. !

The Saint Jean cathedral does have some reasonable claim to antiquity, having been built basically between 1127 an 1161, though it had renovations and repairs since, including a fire in 1212 and a collapsed bell tower in 1724. Inside, there is an elaborate astrological clock which we did see last time. This time they seemed to be charging 5 or 6 euros to look at it, so we passed. Another treasure in the cathedral was a painting from 1630 called Our Lady of the Jacobins, painted in Florence by Dominico Cresti. It is said to have inspired miracles and it attracts pilgrims. The church pamphlet says the painting was so well known that even the revolutionaries did not dare touch it.

One thing the cathedral did not have was a copy of the Shroud of Turin they used to keep in the east Apse. This was fervently worshipped between the 16th century and the Revolution, around which time it disappeared. However the east Apse is still named for it.

Walking back down the main street, we admired the great shops. There were a fair number with stylish kids' clothes, a toy shop with mainly great wood stuff, and giant indoor mall, and also a Galleries Lafayette - the premier department store of Paris. We will leave all shopping in store like that until Paris. For now, we just went to the Casino market where we bought a salad to eat inexpensively in our room. Gotta save up for that shopping spree!

The window of the toy store. Do you see the cable cars?

Saturday crowds grew temporarily thick. Mostly the streets were just pleasantly filled.

Kids clothes - maybe we will find some in Paris.

Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 1,409 km (875 miles)

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