Category Archives: Macon

Friday 24th June 2022 – CALIBURN, STRAWBERRY MOOSE AND I …

… travel miles on our trips out.

As you can see, at one point we were driving over the Col de la Sibérie, the Siberian Pass”.

Not much chance of a snowstorm or a white-out here in this weather but it’s the thought that counts.

Yes, we don’t ‘arf get about a bit.

We got about quite a bit during the night too. I started off somewhere in Scotland on top of one of these Peel Tower things looking at a couple of lorries parked on the side of the road caught in a swirling fog. That’s all that I really remember about this now

Then we were playing a game with these toy soldiers, busy setting ourselves up in position. All of a sudden the Russian army attacked . We were still trying to find the cannon that were in this collection and other artillery and position them on the board but never mind – the Russians were still attacking and we were beginning to panic. All of a sudden I had a marvellous idea. I pressed “rewind” and sent the game back to the very beginning with the idea that we’d hurry and set up the guns now, make sure that we found the correct ones etc before we hit “play” and started the game again. There was something involving Ingrid in this as well, to do with her animals but I can’t remember what it was about now.

I had some students from school and I had them come to complete a survey asking them questions about first aid, emergency services and a pile of all kinds of different stuff that I can’t remember now. They had to sit there with their piece of paper and write out the answers to some questions that I was asking, which I did. When I was about 2/3 the way through my brother came in and asked for someone, that she had to go. I thought that I’d quickly ask the third question because it was probably the most important but he was there urging us on and trying to make this girl leave. It all became quite tense. I wished that I’d started this survey a little earlier or done it a little quicker but he was there and just wouldn’t leave without the idea of this girl packing up in mid-survey and walking off to wherever it was that she had to go.

Having had their way all stopped from doing something a group of us went off to look for them and record their antics and behaviour but that was all that I remember of this unfortunately.

In the previous dream I remember that I was driving a coach, trying to get this coach ready to go on tour with a full load of people. We had to do all kinds of organising, sorting out the food and cleaning up, entering the used food in the bin etc. At one point someone in a car came along and parked nearby and went into the house. Whoever I was with said something like “that person is going to ignore us” so I made a very pointed point of shouting “hello” to him and embarrassed him into coming over and talking to us, making sure that he did. I said to the person with “oh yes he’ll remember us next time he comes”. We were preparing to leave when someone came over to say that two brothers had been released from prison which I thought was good. On the coach were these 2 young girls serving and we were preparing to leave.

Finally I was in London at the block of flats where my Aunt Mary was living. I saw what I thought was her and Michael – I saw them a couple of times so I decided that I would in fact go along and say hello. When I caught them in the corridor I started to have a little chat. When I was ready to leave I borrowed the ladders off the roof rack of another vehicle to take with me to do something. I got in my van and the fuel was very low so I thought that i’d coast to the petrol station down at the bottom of the hill. Somehow the van ran away without me and went off down this hill. It smashed into a few more vehicles. In the end I ended up with another van and exactly the same thing happened again. While I was trying to push it to start it it ran away and fired up without me and ran off down this hill. I could see it from where I was standing all the way down this hill and pile through a row of bollards at the bottom by a traffic light onto the pavement making quite a mess of everything. There were all these people crowding around it trying to find out what had happened. Of course I was a long way away at the top of this hill and I couldn’t do anything at all to stop it.

After all of that it’s no surprise that I was totally wasted this morning.

A tea in bed again did a little to revive me and a shower also helped but I wasn’t really in any mood to say goodbye.

There was all of my stuff, such as it was, to put into the back of Caliburn.

And those regular readers of this rubbish will recall, if they have been regular readers of this rubbish for years, is that the Gorges of the Sioule are phenomenally famous for the hanging clouds that loiter around down there early in the morning and even from miles away you can follow the trace of the river by looking at where the hanging cloud is.

Anyway, say goodbye I did to Rosemary and Mr and Mrs Ukrainian. Miss Ukrainian was still asleep so I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to her and to my surprise I found that I was quite disappointed by that.

The drive through the Auvergnat and the Burgundian countryside was interesting. Once I arrived in Vichy the Lady Who Lives In The SatNav brought me a different way that didn’t include the expressway. We spent our time driving over the hills of Burgundy and through a variety of mountain passes.

On the way over I stopped a couple of times for shopping and for lunch and I would even have had a little siesta but somehow a fly was trapped inside Caliburn and made such a racket when it wasn’t trying to land on me, and irritated me when it did so I gave it up as a bad job.

One of the passes over which I drove was the Col de Siberié, the “Siberian Pass” as you have seen in a previous photo.

This is actually rather a sad place. It was the site of an old Hotel, the Hotel de la Sibérie, long-since demolished, where three refugees from the German forced labour progamme had fled here to take shelter.

Of course, it goes without saying that the Vichy Milice turned up in force and attempted to take away the escapees.

Despite spending a while trying to find out, I’ve yet to come across a verified account of what actually happened at the Hotel de la Sibérie but the three men involved, Jean Fournier, Marcel Honnet and Florent Andlauer, were taken away horizontally in wooden boxes.

It’s said that torture was involved, the three victims ended up being shot, and the milice set the building alight.

The monument that you see here was erected on 26th May 1946

There is said to be a document giving details of the events but it’s in the archives départementales but I didn’t have time to go there. I’ve asked them for a copy but I imagine that it will be a long wait.

It was about 15:30 when I arrived at Jean-Marc’s. It was his family whom I stayed on a school exchange when I was 16 and we found each other via the internet subsequently.

We’ve seen each other a few times and so we had a good chat about our latest news and about old times too although as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my “old times” are in a book that is well and truly closed and filed away in a locked cupboard.

Occasionally some of my memories crop up in my dreams and that’s the best place for them, if they are going to have to surface at all.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … vinyard I invited him and his wife out for a meal in exchange for a bed for the night. The meal at the Ambroisie was certainly different and the staff was excellent. I’ve been to this restaurant before and I’ll go back again.

Back at Jean-Marc’s later, I bought an oven. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that my table-top oven is not very reliable and nothing in it cooks as it did. One of Jacqueline’s daughters bought an oven, a fitted oven, but it’s far too big for her small studio so she was selling it at a more-than-reasonable price. The kind of price where if it won’t work than I won’t lose very much.

By pure coincidence I have a friend who lives near Munich about half a mile from one of the largest IKEAs in Europe so if I make it as far as his place I’ll go and buy a kitchen unit into which I can fit it.

But that’s not for now. Right now I’m off to bed. I’m going round to see Jean-Marc’s mum tomorrow morning. She’s a lovely lady and I like her very much

Wednesday 29th July 2020 – TONIGHT I’M IN …

… Switzerland.

This morning I was awake at 06;00 which was quite a surprise seeing as I had a really bad night when it took ages trying to get off to sleep. And even more surprising, I actually beat the third alarm to my feet.

It was a really beautiful morning again out there but I didn’t have all that much time to admire the view.

First task was to write my notes from yesterday. Everyone else was still asleep and I’d forgotten to ask for the internet password so I wasn’t able to upload it – that’s something for tonight.

But anyway there was a group of people setting out to cause mayhem in an Egyptian city last night, planting explosive and everything like that. Somehow I’d become roped in to this. We’d worked out our whole plan and tactics to do this. On the very day I had to go to meet them in the morning and they would communicate all right . I would have to walk into town with this and we would meet up somewhere and I’d pass the dynamite out to various different people. This was what I set out to do. I set out but I remembered that I had my fitbit on back to front or upside down or something and everytime I pressed one button it gave me the wrong reading. I started to develop really cold feet. I could see all things about treatment in an Egyptian gaol and surviving to be executed, all this kind of thing. I made up my mind to go to the British Embassy and give them the dynamite but walking into the British Embassy with an overcoat full of dynamite – all this came into my mind about how on earth do I get rid of all of this stuff and do it safely?

Sooner or later everyone else came out of their room and we all had breakfast together, followed by a nice long chat that went on for hours. And that’s quite a surprise really because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m not usually the sociable type.

When it came to about 12:30 I reckoned that it was time to leave. If I stay too long in one place I start to put down roots and after all I still had a long way to go. So I said my goodbyes and Caliburn and I headed off into the hills.

We drove through Macon, confusing ourselves as we always do and ended up on the by-pass which was not the way that I wanted to go. I was hoping to head through the town centre and have a look around as I passed by but it didn’t work out like that.

On the way through some small village I stopped at a supermarket (it was lunchtime and all of the boulangeries were closed) to pick up a baguette. We carried on through Bourg-en-Bresse and then began to climb into the mountains.

The road that I’m on is the D936 that winds its way through the mountains from Bourg-en-Bresse and Dorlat, and at Corveissiat it drops down onto a clifftop following the meanders of the River Ain.

Just along here is a scenic layby with a good view overlooking the river and if there is a better place than this to stop and admire the view as I ate my butty, I would love to see it because it really was splendid.

The colour of the river was interesting too. I’m not sure whether that emerald green colour is actually the colour of the water, the reflection of the sky, the reflection of the forest, a trick of the light, a trick of the camera or a combination of one or all of them. And I pondered over that as I ate my tomato, hummus and salad baguette.

The town of Corveissiat is not without interest either.

There are the ruins of an old medieval castle – the Chateau d’Arnans – in the vicinity and htere’s a church, the L’église de Saint-Maurice d’Échazeaux which is very rare indeed in the western world because the last modernisation of the church took place in the 14th Century. It managed to escape the “Victorian Frightful” scale of modernisations that ruined just about every other church in western Europe.

there’s also a well-known cave system in the rock, complete with a submerged chamber that is said to be the favourite place for many divers to practise. As well as divers, it’s full of bats too. At least 7 species of bat have been recorded here .

But unfortunately I don’t have the time to go exploring. I’ve a lot to do and a long way to go today and not much time to do it.

A really nice drive through the Jura mountains brings me into Switzerland where there is the really weird road junction and border post

And then we reach our most favourite spot in the Jura mountains.

Strawberry Moose has to leap out of Caliburn and go for a look for himself at the view. There’s even a handy little bench on which he can sit. And I have to say that I was glad to see it because we had been roasting inside Caliburn even at this kind of altitude.

Where we are is actually by an old Roman road that runs between St-Cergue and Trélex in Switzerland. The modern road is a windy, twisty route full of hairpin bends but the old Roman road just goes straight up and down the slopes.

Where the Roman road and the modern road meet, there’s a scenic pull-in where we can stop and admire the view, and take a few photos here and there.

Down there is Lake Geneva – Lac Leman – and the fertile alluvial plain. We’re looking towards the south and somewhere in that direction off the photo to the right is Geneva. Beyond it are the Alps and we pass back into some more of France and encounter Mont Blanc on the border with Italy.

We’d be able to see all of that if there hadn’t been all of this haze. That’s a real disappointment this afternoon.

Down there at the foot of the hills on the shore of the lake is Nyon, famous for being the headquarters of UEFA.

We’re going to be driving all the way down there to the lakeshore and then turning left, north-eastwards towards the interior of the country and the Austrian border. We aren’t unfortunately going to get to see all that much of the mountains in the background as we travel and the hazy afternoon means that you can’t even see then properly from here..

So down the hill we went until we hit the lakeshore and then headed for Lausanne. At Lausanne we left the lakeshore and headed inland up into the hills.

Having consulting the internet, I found myself a motel, the Motel La Poularde, in Romont.

This is the most expensive hotel yet, but then again this is Switzerland and the place is good value for money. My room is enormous and I could even hold a ball in my room.

As is usual, I have forgotten to bring my adapter with me for the electrical plugs but they managed to find one at reception. That means that I can cook tea and then use the laptop. I must make a mental note to buy an adapter tomorrow because knowing my luck, I’ll be stranded here in Switzerland again and I won’t be able to find one.

ut talking about tomorrow, tomorrow I’m pushing further on and we’ll see where we end up. But right now tonight I’m off to bed.

Tuesday 26th June 2018 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today, but at about 16:30 this afternoon despite having been on the road for about 5 hours, I’d covered just 190 kilometres.

I’d started bright and early too, being up long before the alarm went off, thanks to whoever it was who decided to make a loud noise at 05:00.

When Jacqueline awoke, she baked some bread which was delicious and we had breakfast – home-made bread with home-made cherry jam. And chatted for a while too, but at 10:30 I hit the road. There’s a lot to do.

First stop was the Chateau de Chasselas, well-known to all Monty Python fans of course.

Last time that I was here I’d bought a dozen bottles of wine to give as gifts. There are still plenty left but as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I can’t get at them. So I need some more.

And it was quite a hike to get there too as they were resurfacing the driveway and we had to go the long way round.

But this was just one more unnecessary expense. This “relying on friends to return favours” is costing me an arm and a leg. Far cheaper to pay for everything professionally than to go through what I’m going through right now.

That building there on the corner used to be the village café of Chasselas.

Jean-Marc’s grandmother was the owner of the place back in 1970 and this is where I stayed for part of the time that I was here back then.

Of course, it didn’t look like that then. It had much more charm back in those days.

I headed into Macon because I had noticed diesel at €1:39 a litre last night, and Caliburn could do with a drink. And from there I headed off through the centre of the town and across the Saone.

And I don’t recognise a thing about Macon these days. I’d be totally lost wandering around there today, it’s changed that much.

The road out was uneventful, but quite slow behind all of these grockles in their mobile homes. And also due to the multitude of roadworks and diversions that interrupted everything. Not to mention The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav who took me on the scenic route through Bourg-en-Bresse.

But at Lons-le-Saunier it all went horribly wrong. Too busy trying to beat a long line of lorries across a roundabout I must have missed my turning and ended up on a road that I’ve never travelled before.

It took me deep into the Jura Mountains and right over the top of a series of mountain passes, at one of which I stopped to make lunch.

We crossed into Switzerland at a frontier post that I never knew existed and round another mountain pass that presented me with this beautiful view of Lake Geneva and what I was expecting to be Lausanne.

And I would certainly have known if I had seen this view before because this really was so stunning. I joined another pile of grockles busily photographing the scene.

But it wasn’t Lausanne at all as I found out as I dropped down to the lake, but Noyon, home of UEFA.

And I couldn’t remember exactly where Noyon was, so I guessed, guessed wrong, and ended up going about half an hour in the wrong direction before I realised.

So back into Noyon and back out the other side, in plenty of time to hit the 17:00 rush-hour queue at Lausanne, where I could leisurely take photos out of Caliburn’s window while we waited in traffic jams.

I’d been feeling quite ill for the last couple of hours and had been wishing that I could stop. But once I got beyond Lausanne I found my second wind.

Here I could put my foot down and I began to eat up the miles. And it was amazing just how quickly and how far we managed to move.

But another major road-works and diversion meant that there was no time to reach my favourite motel opposite IKEA on the outskirts of Zurich so I pulled up at a guesthouse in a small town off the beaten track.

Switzerland is frightfully expensive so having negotiated a price of €60 cash (I didn’t have any Swiss money – that’s something else stuck back in Virlet) I wasn’t expecting much.

And it’s just as well, because I didn’t get it. This place would have been fine 50 years ago, but they might have changed the carpets and the electrical wiring.

For tea tonight I have a tin of potatoes, a tin of mixed veg, a tin of lentils, some gravy browning and a slow cooker. and furthermore I managed to make it plug in (I forgot about Swiss plugs, didn’t I?) And it was all very delicious too.

I ended the night with a shower, and now I’m having another early night.

It’s been another long day.

Monday 25th June 2018 – ONE OF THE THINGS …

… that I have to avoid is stress. I’ve been told that many times. That’s going to finish me off quicker than anything else. All stressful thoughts need to be banished immediately from my mind.

And so after yesterday afternoon’s issues, there I was lying on my palliasse watching the clock tick round. And I definitely remember 03:44 at one point in the morning.

But I must have gone to sleep at one point because the alarm at 06:20 dragged me out of my slumber.

And out of a nocturnal ramble too. I was back in Canada picking up Strider who had been parked by the side of the road since I left him last year. And people had been using him as a rubbish skip. so he needed to be emptied. I also put my hand inside the rear door behind the rear seats (which he doesn’t have of course) and started to pullout loads of rubbish – dirt, paper, leaves and so on. And I wondered how it had come to be there. The answer was that the rear part of the cab roof that folded over down to the rear window was made of plastic (which it isn’t of course) and the plastic had rotted, allowing the weather to get in. This needed to be replaced but I wasn’t sure of the best way to do it. Meanwhile Darren was there calling his friends over to have a look at the rubbish in it. When I said something to him about that he excused himself saying that he meant come and look at how old it is. But, as I reminded him, he himself is much older than Strider.

A shower didn’t do much to revive me and my spirits, and neither did breakfast, seeing as I had chosen decaffeinated coffee by mistake.

So I came up here to pack instead and headed downstairs to load up Caliburn.

First stop was the Brico Depot just across the way, where the automatic sliding door knocked the free coffee right out of my hand.

With not being able to get into my house, I wasn’t able to pick up my hole saws so I bought a cheap set from there. And “cheap” is certainly the word. They might get through the hardboard but not very much else.

From here, the next part of my route should have been pretty much straightforward, but an accident on the N79 had closed off a section of that road and we ended up being diverted through a delightful rustic rural route that meandered for miles behind a whole series of heavy lorries. To cover what must have been a 5-mile stretch of road took us 45 minutes and added 25 kilometres to the route.

There’s a LeClerc just down the road from here and so I stopped to stock up the supplies for the next week or so, as well as to buy a few things that I had forgotten to bring (and to forget a few more things that I wanted too).

Dodging the roadworks, because the whole place is being dug up right now, I pressed on.But running rather early and feeling rather tired after last night, I found a little place to stop and rest for 10 minutes.

And 10 minutes, did I say? When I awoke it was 13:52. I’d been flat out for almost 2 hours and as a result I’d missed my lunch.

But I hadn’t missed going on a travel though. In some kind of university where some kind of official woman – might even have been the Dean – informed the students that because of some kind of irregularity in their conduct, a certain order for their new hats had been cancelled. I recounted this (with a few embellishments) to a group of other people there, one of whom noticed that her order of hats for her students had been cancelled too. So at the following meeting, the lady concerned raised the issue, stating that the order had been cancelled by a majority vote of just one. Her friend hastily corrected her, so the first lady returned to the original story, and asked why her order had been cancelled too. The Dean or whoever she was replied “well, I don’t know” in one of these stage remarks where the tone of voice conveyed more than the message. “I bet I do” was the tart reply from the lady raising the complaint. Of course, I exploded into laughter – a stage laughter too – which left no-one in any doubt that I was fully aware of what was going on.

Having been startled into awakening myself, I hit the road immediately. Due to my running a day or so early, Jean-Marc and Jacqueline had changed all of their plans to fit in with mine (which was nice of them) so I didn’t want to disappoint them.

They live in the mountains at the back of Macon in some of the most beautiful countryside that I have ever seen, where Jean-Marc had his own vinyard and made his own wine before he retired.

We’d met on a student exchange programme almost 50 years ago but lost touch with each other afterwards until 4 years ago when I bumped quite by accident into his aunt in a village where his grandmother owned a café, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall.

It just goes to show you exactly how small the world is these days.

Threading my way through the hills and the vinyards of the Maconnais, I ended up chez them where I duly presented the newlyweds with a bottle of champagne.

We had such a lot to talk about, seeing as the last time that Jean-Marc and I had seen each other, I was stretched out in a hospital bed having just been brought out of an operating theatre in the hospital in Montlucon.

On eisn’t at one’s best under the circumstances

Jacqueline had to go out later so Jean-Marc took me on a drive out to the countryside to revisit some of the places where we had been in 1970.

The obvious place to visit at first was the Roche de Solutre, the most prominent hill in the landscape for miles around. We’d climbed to the top of it (there’s a path) back in 1970 but that was a long time ago and I’ve slept since then so I don’t remember much about it.

He remembers that we cycled here all the way from Macon, but again I don’t remember a thing about the journey.

Jean-Marc told me that we had met all of the other exchange students at the foot of the rock and had a picnic but I don’t recall anything of that. Old age is definitely creeping on.

The next rock is the Roche de Vergisson and so we walked a little way along the track towards it.

Not all the way, of course. I might have done that in 1970 but I’ve no intention of doing it now, thank you.

The track is called La Voie Romaine by the locals and there’s no reason to suppose that it isn’t a Roman Road, although I do know of a Pont Romain – the Roman bridge – in the Auvergne which wasn’t built until the 13th Century, as do listeners of our former radio programmes.

There are several good views all over the Saone valley and up in the hills.

There are only so many of them that you can see when you are on a pushbike or an old Mobylette, so Jean-Marc took me all around the hilltops to see the things that I had missed all those years ago.

And it certainly made a great difference being able to get about in a car.

Mind you, I’m not as young as I used to be so I couldn’t go galloping up to the top for a better view like I might have done at one time.

And so you’ll have to make do with a photo of Macon taken from half-way up a hill at the side of the road.

And I don’t think that it loses anything in the view. It’s still quite impressive.

While we were waiting for Jacqueline to come back, Moonn the long-haired cat was sitting on my knee. And when she returned, Moonn leapt off me, leaving behind most of her fur. I ended up looking like a snowman.

Jacqueline and Jean-Marc offered me a bed for the night which was very kind of them, so in return I took them out for a meal in Macon.

There wasn’t a great deal of choice for a vegan meal with it being Monday and everywhere being closed, but we did find somewhere.

My vegan soup and couscous with vegetables followed by raspberry purée was totally delicious and I’ll be going back there again some time in the future.

Jacqueline drove back and when we arrived, I declined a coffee went straight to bed.

It’s been a long day and I’m thoroughly exhausted. I’m not used to all this effort.

Sunday 17th May 2015 – WELL, WASN’T THAT EXPENSIVE?

There I was, deep in the arms of Morpheusin the small hours in my little rest area at the side of a Swiss Autoroute when there was a banging on the door and a cry of “Kontrole!”

Yes, the Swiss police are not noted for their sense of humour but then they do have a job to do, I suppose, and I duly presented my papers.

While they were being checked, I had a lengthy chat with one of the other officers about this and that, and then it came down to the crunch “where’s your vignette?”

If you use a Swiss autoroute you have to buy a special sticker to give you the necessary entitlement, and in all my years of travelling I’ve never ever bothered with it. But sooner or later I was bound to be picked up, and sleeping in a rest area on the autoroute made it an odds-on certainty.

No complaints from me about it, although it stopped me going back to sleep again. And while I was lying there in half a daze, it occurred to me that I’d carried on a conversation for about 15 minutes in German without even pausing for breath. Things are looking up!

Next morning in the bright sunshine, a took a photo of the rest area just to prove that I had been here, and then I made myself a coffee. Nothing else though, because I realised that I had forgotten to buy anything for breakfast

I was definitely having a bad morning.

The irony of all of this is that just about 15 minutes later, The Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav directed me off the autoroute and into the Jura mountains for a leisurely drive home, most of which was completely uneventful except for at the boulangerie where some woman moaned like hell because I had the nerve to complain that she had blocked me in on the car park. Silly four-legged animal well-known for giving a high-quality dairy drink!

My road back took me via Macon and that gave me an idea. I telephoned my friend Jean-Marc who lives up in the hills at the back of the town to see if he was in for visitors, and to give him an opportunity to flee the country before I arrived.

We first met when we were both 16 – Crewe was twinned with Macon and we exchanged families during one summer. I went to live there and he went to live in Crewe. And we met up again last year under the most bizarre circumstances, as long-term readers of this rubbish will well-recall.

We had a long chat and discussed old times for quite a while, and drank a couple of cups of coffee, for which I was very grateful.

And then I had a completely uneventful drive back home, arriving at about 20:05.

And as Barry Hay once famously said during a live Golden Earring concert on Scheveningen Beach back in 199(3?) – “let me tell you one thing, man, it’s always good to be back home!”

-2

Saturday 5th July 2014 – WHAT A NIGHT

I had something of a disturbed night last night – tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable for much of it. Probably the torrential rain pounding off Caliburn’s roof had much to do with this because there was plenty of that during the night.

Mind you, I wasn’t here for much of it. I was with the daughter of a woman who was at the University where I studied and I was persuading her to elope with me. We ended up fleeing up to Canada, Montreal in fact and I was persuading this girl that we would be fine there. Estate Agents worked on commission from the owners and once they knew what kind of property we were after and what our budget was, they would move heaven and earth to find us somewhere.

We were with Darren and Rachel and at least three other people and telling this agent what we wanted. I explained that we were not expecting to find somewhere at Astoria (did I mean Anjou, my favourite suburb of Montreal?) or in another suburb the name of which I can’t remember but we didn’t want an inner city place and we needed space to park a few cars.

I took this girl on a tour of the suburbs, some of them quite expensive, and I remember our discussion being punctuated by me saying “ohh look, there’s a Ford Consul” and that kind of thing.

So having dealt with these issues I finally managed to wake up and make myself a coffee. Then I hit the road.

At least, just as far as Nantua, when a most unusual lorry stopped me in my tracks. A Willeme it is, a marque that I have never heard of before.

The company began just after World War I when a young man bought a job lot of spare parts for American wartime lorries, with the aim of selling them to people who had acquired the wartime lorries. From there he went on to reconditioning the vehicles and then to build his own heavy lorries and tractors for articulated units.

However the company didn’t last all that long. Despite the reputation that his vehicles had for reliability and strength (there was even a tractor unit that could pull 1000 tonnes), the company disappeared in the late 1960s.

I had a pleasant drive through the showers and ended up in Macon. That has a significance for me because in 1970 when I was 16 I spent a summer there as a guest in a French family.

While I was having had a good look around in Macon, I noticed a sign for “Chasselas”. Never mind the “Chateau de Chasselas, hey Josiah?” of the for Yorkshiremen in a Monty Python sketch, Chasselas is a real place and there is a real chateau there with a vinyard and it produces high-quality white wines. And if you want to know how I know, the answer to this is that in 1970 when I was at Macon, I spent a lot of time at the village bar at Chasselas, the home of the aunt of the family with whom I stayed.

The road up to Chasselas passes through some interesting, if not famous countryside, especially if you are connoisseur of grands crus, and also if you know your wine very well.

Just down there are two villages, once called Pouilly and the other called Fuissé and some of the best white wine in the world comes from there, produced from the grapes that you see in the foreground. Way over in the background is the valley of the Saone and the town of Macon.

We’d been to Chasselas, Nerina and I, in 1992 when we went to the south of France in the old Ford Fiasco. The old bar was still there then but it had been converted into a kind of shop, and I forgot to take a photo of it. Seeing as how I was within about 15kms of the place today, off I went.

It’s now a private house as you can see, and there seems to be a little money about the place. And here’s a surprising thing. A woman walking down the road looked as if she might know a thing or two about the old bar and to my complete and utter surprise sje turned out to be the daughter of the owner of the bar. She was about 12 when I was there and I remember her having a terrible crush on me (although I can’t think why). I’m astonished as to how small the world is these days.

So having caught up on old times I went off to the Chateau and disturbed them at lunch in order to buy a crate of Chateau de Chasselas to share amongst my friends. Yes, it’s something of a myth to say that you can never disturb a Frenchman at his lunch – this guy was keen enough to take my money. We also talked about the rain last night. They had had a hailstorm here and much of the harvest was ruined.

Not too far from Chasselas is another place of interest. This is La Roche de Solutre – the Rock of Solutre and incredible though it may seem, I’ve climbed that. Or, at least, I did when I was 16. I don’t know what must have come over me but I do recall being with a bunch of French youths at the time so I didn’t want to let the side down, I suppose.

The story goes that prehistoric man used to herd wild beasts up to the top and push them over the top as a way of killing them to collect the meat. The fact that heaps and heaps of prehistoric animal bones have been found at the foot of the drop is thr reason why this theory has been advanced.

So after that I headed for home via the supermarket at Paray le Monial where I did my week’s shopping.

And here I am. And here I’ll stay – for the next few weeks at least.

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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality