I started to get a sore throat at the farm the day before we left. As it turned out, it was a good thing that I had to ride while sick because it left me no time for moping or whining. Well, except the one day that we decided to stop and stay in Noyers, I moped and ate soup that day. The other days, we rode at least 7 hours a day. We saw all new territory for both of us that revived the dream of living in France. The center was so typical, we loved it.
We decided to drive early each morning, stop for breakfast, drive a while longer, have a full lunch, then grab a light dinner. It made it easier to handle the long days (if you look at the mileage, we only go about 300k per day, but going an average of 40km/hr it doesn’t go fast). On Monday we took a 40 minute nap in a field after lunch and then got back on and kept riding until sundown.
The days were the warmest yet. We lucked out and ended up driving on what seems like the first sunny week in mainland France. Monday, the thermometer topped at 70 degrees. Tuesday around 65 and Wednesday, back up to 68 or so. It made the rides so much easier and we could go until the sun was low.
We’ve spent the last two days in the medieval town of Noyers-sur-Serein right in the middle of France, about 200km south of Paris. It’s typically French, as typical as I’ve seen with their admirable attention to detail and commitment to a high quality of life. The Bourgogne region has fairytale castles, rolling green hills with woods filling the crevasses and lining the rivers… the movie Chocolat was filmed here.
This town – Noyers – fills the bend of a river and its buildings have exposed beams on the facades. They lean over the stony street like they’re about to give up, and life goes on as usual. There are only 700 residents here. We saw signs for an “Old Chateau” so we walked out of town and followed the river against the foot of a forested hill as it bent to the south. The next sign pointing to the chateau was so white-washed that we walked past it and only realized we’d missed the turn a mile later. So we turned around and found the path and turned up the hill. We went up the steps, steps made of wood, and walked up the hill through the trees until we came to a plateau where two towers were being excavated. It looked like the top of the towers were still original, they stuck up like broken fork tines, but the bottom was being expertly redone by a team of archaeologists, I hope.
There was a sign pointing to a panoramic view, so we followed the path across a golden field, then we crossed down into a valley and up the other side. When we got to the top we kept walking through the woods but noticed that the ground was strange – it was bumpy and just didn’t look right. We started to notice a lot of white stones and we started to realize that the path was taking us over a buried city. To the left was a wall pushing out of the ground, to the right the inside of a turret had been exposed. The valley we’d walked across had been a pair of city walls. We’d later learn that we had walked near a dungeon and a church and the town square. All buried on the top of the hill.
Anyway, we’re going up to Paris today to say goodbye to the scooter. We’re heading home in just a few weeks so we feel we should start trying to sell it now rather than wait until we’re desperate. Neither Azure nor I are looking forward to being back in a big city, but it’ll be brief – after it’s sold we’re going to go back down south for the end of the trip.
I had the good fortune of Azure getting sick, so I went for a long walk today from Noyers-sur-Serein (where we’re staying) to two neighboring towns along the border of pasture and forest. At one point the path was an old Roman road. It was about 9km (5+ miles) and it took me around 2.5 hours.
France is a walker’s paradise – there are well-traveled trails crossing the entire country and excellent, abundant maps that explain the routes – but this was the first time I’d ever taken advantage of them.
I also ran into a few good looking ladies along the way…
We love to travel and learn. We like eating and sleeping and going on the internet and we can do all of those things from anywhere in the world. We are originally from Seattle, but no longer stay for the winters. We must leave and see new places and great ways to live. We enjoy living well and seeing how others live well.
Winter of 2010-2011 we were in Europe for a little over a month, then Haiti, then Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan. There was logic to it at the time, don't worry about trying to figure it out. We don't yet know where we're going for winter of '011. Maybe France? Maybe India?
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