To Brioude

September 23, 2024

It’s another travel day, and another grueling workout lies ahead: a half a mile to the train station here, and then another mile from the Brioude station to our apartment there. Two more miles! It brings us up to ten in the last eight days. And we’ve even got video! This should make my friend Frank feel guilty for his comments about our current regimen, suggesting that we should have the site renamed ChooChooBlaze. An interesting idea, but sort of insulting. I decided not to forward on this creative idea to the site administrator.

Our train doesn’t leave until around one so we have the morning free: and the weather is fine so I decide to go out for a second walk through town. We pack up and leave the room around 10:30 and take our belongings downstairs to the lobby where Rachael hangs out while I repeat basically the same short loop past the basilica and the Hotel de Ville that I walked before dinner last night. So nothing new, but with the enhancement of sunlight.

I come back even more impressed than I was yesterday. It’s a place that would merit a longer stay, one that allowed time to bike or hike into the surroundings if we had our health. Moulins is a fairly small place but a historically significant one. It was a second home for the dynastic line of Bourbon monarchs that ruled France and Navarre until the French Revolution and in its heyday in the fifteenth century was the capital of the Duchy of Bourbon and one of the most important cities in France.

The long eastern wall of the cathedral. This and other sections of the structure are newer enhancements to the original collegiate church built in the early sixteenth century, made in the early 1900’s when the church was established as a cathedral.

The balustrade along the east wall is capped by a line of figures representing the Bourbon country folk in regional costume.

The streets around the cathedral and palace seem like the most interesting part of town.

We had a photo of this street yesterday but today’s light is better.

The Jacquemart Tower, completed in 1445.

I wish now I’d known to stay longer and take a closer look. There are five figures at the top, the members of the Jacquemart family the tower is named after. The three children ring out the quarter hours and the parents do the heavy lifting on the hour.

The Nouvelles Galeries, built in 1914 in the Art Nouveau style. I’m certain that there must be a number of other features of Moulins worth discovering if we’d had more time and energy.

Looking down Place d’Allier toward Sacred Heart Church. The water is at the base of the obelisk and fountain we saw yesterday, and just to the right is a carousel I should have taken a photo of also.

I get back to the hotel and rejoin Rachael in the lobby shortly before noon. While we wait, a man enters the lobby wheeling his bicycle, equipped for bikepacking. Simeon is on a fast-paced tour from his home in Stuttgart to the city of his birth, Braga in Portugal. He’s a bike racer on his first real bikepacking experience, but unfortunately it’s not going well. After biking about 150 miles on his second day out he developed a knee injury that he attributes to biking with his knee bent outwards to get around the frame pouch. He’s stopping his biking here as a result and is taking the train the rest of the way.

Video sound track: Let It Be, by Paul McCartney

The two hour ride to Brioude is pleasingly uneventful. As we travel south and up into the Central Massif the countryside slowly grows more contoured and transitions into a volcanic land dotted with puys. We’ve toured in the anuvergne only once before, when we biked from Clermont-Ferrand to San Sebastián back in 2000. I was really drawn to the open, sparsely populated volcanic landscape, but somehow we’ve never made it back.

The view across Clermont-Ferrand. In the distance is what I think must be Puy de Dôme, one of the youngest of a chain of volcanos. France is so diverse!

Our first task when we arrive in Brioude is to check in at the station with an inquiry about our next train south. A few days ago Rachael noticed an alert on the SNCF website that anpperently affects us - a disruption for track maintenance for the coming workweek. During this period rail service will be replaced by buses for a portion of the four hour journey, and we want reassurance that the buses will take bicycles. Fortunately they do or we’d have had a real problem to unscramble.

Checking into our apartment is a frustrating/funny experience. We’ve had trouble trying to get access instructions for when we arrive, and after several tries we decide we’ll just show up at our announced time and hope for the best. We arrive about a half hour early and take benches in the square across the street from what we think is our unit, an unwelcoming corrugated steel door in a windowless wall of what looks like a former bar with nothing above it but a street number.

We try to reach our host letting her know we’ve arrived, leaving messages both on the phone and on Booking without receiving a response. Finally Rachael walks across the street and stands in front of the door for about ten minutes so she’ll be more visible, but finally we get a message through Booking from our host: Where are you, I can’t see you. So I look again at our reservation and see that somehow we’ve gotten the address wrong. We should be waiting at a different address around the corner and a block and a half away.

So while Rachael watches everything I walk down the street, find a short, smiling elderly woman peeking out a doorway at me, and we’re in. Pretty funny!

We’ll be in Brioude, a town I’ve long wanted to see and am happy to finally come to, for three nights. So we can wait a day to see what’s been standing here waiting for us for nearly a thousand years to finally take a look at. It’s about time!

It’s that whitish door to the left of the bar sign. Looks promising enough.

Today's ride: 2 miles (3 km)
Total: 3,803 miles (6,120 km)

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Suzanne GibsonLooks like you are getting pretty far south now. Will the next hop take you to the Provence?
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2 months ago

Scott AndersonYep. We leave for Tarascon tomorrow, just south of Avignon. After that we’re back on the bike again, but slowly.
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2 months ago