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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