To Beaune

May 18, 2022

Today’s ride begins with a geography lesson. There is so much to learn about France (and constantly relearn, if your memory is as terrible as mine), and for as many times as we’ve visited this country now I don’t think I’ve ever known there was a canal connecting the Loire and Saone: the Canal du Centre. Completed n the late 1700’s, it for the first time opened up an inland water route between northern France and the south. From this illustration, you can see that a water route is available all the way from the mouth of the Loire on the Atlantic and the mouth of the Rhone on the Mediterranean.

And this map shows more detail of the Canal de Centre, including the location of its many locks. The canal is an impressive engineering feat: in its 112 kilometers it includes 61 locks, or nearly one per mile for the entire length. Starting from the Loire end it rises about 80 meters before dropping 130 meters to the Saone.

What these maps don’t show is that at the Saone end at least it is an outstanding cycling route - smooth, paved the entire length that we rode it (about 14 miles, to Santenay), running on the top of the dike directly next to the canal. No motorized vehicles allowed either, except for the occasional grass mower that we had to walk around.

Embarrassingly, not only was I unaware of this canal’s existence before; I wasn’t even aware we’d be following it today. I mapped us to follow the cycle route, but didn’t zoom in on the map to notice it was following a waterway. “Oh, this is very nice” I thought to myself as we came to the canal as soon as we left the outskirts of Chalon - but I didn’t know how long we’d be following it, or even what it was until looking it up afterwards. Just some canal. You see a lot of these in France.

Along the Canal du Centre. Fourteen wonderful miles like this ahead.

In the first mile we came across three herons standing atop the berm right next to or in the bike path. All very bold or tame, they could hardly be bothered by us and didn’t fly off until we were within fifteen feet.

The canal is still in use, possibly exclusively by pleasure boats. We passed perhaps ten this morning, not counting one’s moored on the sides.

One of the 61 locks on the canal. For one stretch they seemed to come about once every half mile.

Another lock already? You’d have to have a lot of patience and time on your hands to take this journey, I think. You’d be constantly stopping, waiting for your lock to fill or empty, and then get underway for the next half mile or so. Sounds tedious to me, but maybe all the wine helps.

About ten miles into the ride Rachael pulls off to answer the phone. It’s Susan, converging with us in Beaune on her long ride from Angouleme. She started the day a bit to the west of us near Autun, and is checking in to see if we’re anywhere nearby - imagining meeting up partway to town somewhere and biking in to Beaune together like we did last autumn on the ride too Salzburg. She’s ahead of us somewhere on the vineyard voie verte whatever that is and says she’ll stop for lunch somewhere and check back later.

A few miles later we come to Santenay, leave the canal, and double back to the northeast. Looking up we see we’re now on the Voie des Vignes, the vineyard greenway; and Rachael looks around, sees vineyards suddenly everywhere we look, and figures we must be getting closer to Susan. But nope - they text each other, conclude that we’ll meet up in Meursault about five miles up the road. But that doesn’t happen either - the last time we check in with each other she’s decided to go off on some loop somewhere, and it’s clear we won’t be meeting up on the road today after all. At dinner then.

We ate lunch in Santenay, on the steps beneath Philip the Bold’s castle.

So we just ride. And the ride is brilliant, on a well marked cycle route along a series of tiny, traffic-free wine roads through stunning wine country.

On the Voie des Vignes, the Burgundy wine route.

On the ridge above Satenay is the Sorine Mill, built in the early 1800’s and recently restored.

Video sound track: Dragonfly, by Yasmin Williams

We arrive in Beaune exactly at 2, when our self check-in apartment is available. By now it’s 85 and we’re ready to just lie around out of the sun, but first we have to get in. The location instructions aren’t clear, but a phone call takes care of that. We get the keys out of the lockbox, I step in and find our room while Rachael unloads her bike. There’s a slight problem when she tries to get in though - she can’t open the door because it locked again, and I can’t open it from the inside either. It’s a strange door, with the locking mechanism a magnetic plate on the top of the door. There’s some panic, but in the meantime we let her in because the door is half ajar and just locked up tight at the top. I can wrest it open it barely enough to hand through the keys, and she unlocks the door from the outside. We keep it open while we study the situation further and finally discover the unlocking mechanism.

With that scare behind us, it’s time for a nap.

Team Anderson knows what to do with a hot, humid afternoon.

The big meetup we’ve long been anticipating (it’s been since October when the seeds of this idea were first planted) is at seven, at Le Table du Square, a nice restaurant Suzanne picked for us. We arrive a few minutes early and are seated at a pretty table outside, thankfully in the shade of a large plane tree. While we wait we’re presented with a phone book sized wine menu for our consideration.

Two pages out of 45. How does anyone with a real sense of taste ever decide?

Five minutes later we’re still sitting there by ourselves, wondering if we’ve been stood up and are the victims of a very cruel prank Susan and Suzanne have been scheming over for months. They’re probably not even in France at all.

But then, they appear. Let the celebrations begin!

We claim a new CycleBlaze European record! Has anyone else had a larger meetup on this continent before?

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Ride stats today: 32 miles, 1,100’; for the tour: 1,882 miles, 97,100’

Today's ride: 32 miles (51 km)
Total: 1,910 miles (3,074 km)

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Lyle McLeodVery nice to see the 'meet up'! K and I rode the same section of Voie de Vignes from Volnay through to Nuits St George in August 2017 - it was one of the most memorable days of our trip. Looks like you had similar conditions - blue sky but hot and humid. I guess it doesn't matter if it's May or August.
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