In which Sid and Doris ride from Beaune on the Tacot line, cross the Saone to join the Paris, Lyon and Mediterrane line to stay at Lons.
In the 1830s Louis Philippe, king of France from 1830 to 1848, supported the growth of railways in France, comparing France with England’s extensive network. Initially a popular Citizen King he abdicated during the 1848 European revolutions, moving to England and dying in Surrey two years later.
In 1840 a line from Paris via Lyon to the Med was started. Towns not on the route built branch lines. The Tacot was initially a light rail tramway from Beaune to Allerey which was both on the PLM line and an inland port on the Saone. The line also supported a WW1 American base and hospital. At the end of the war the hospital became a college so the soldiers could be trained for their new lives while awaiting repatriation.
This Tacot line takes us on velvety surfaces to the Saone, where we see someone else’s epic as they take their yacht with mast down through inland waterways.
Verdun sur le Doubs boasts the Cafe de Paris with its justly famous banjo band.
It has been raining. It is raining – so the coffees last a long time but we aren’t gumming up a table. We buy tremendous tartines, tartes and desserts to fuel the next few days.
Sadly the museum of wheat and bread is shut. This might have rivalled the cement museum in Hungary.
We can only show what we see and Sid is charmed to see a Simca 1,100 and a Chrysler Alpine in this garden at Toutenant. Chrysler Europe owned the Rootes brands in the UK and Simca in France but sold out to Peugeot in 1978. PSA relaunched the Talbot brand and kept the separate models until 1987. Who can forget the Talbot Horizon? There is one rotting at the back of this garden.
It is still raining, but we are not at sock max, the point at which they will take on no more water. In the absence of a church porch or bus stop we are pleased to find Doris’s lunchtime bamboo bivouac, which is very dry.
The journey is punctuated by ‘first sightings’. The first vines. The first skink. In Lons we have the first pétanque game. And at dinner the first Camembert roti…
…. which we take to be great advance on Vache Qui Rit, a cheap cheese spread made in Lons. We eat early and retreat to our hotel.
Rain at night is good.
An orange Simca – ahh! My first car was an orange Simca 1100, bought at auction in 1982 for £260. It travelled to canoeing events all over the country & even went to Europe. My 3rd car was a Simca van, also orange, only cost £90 but your feet got wet when you drove through puddles. Great cars, the orange colour looked good with the rust.