2023 - La Loire à Vélo: 07/05/23

15-24 degC, fine and sunny, with a lazy cool breeze

Ride: 10km; total: 858km

Walk: 5km; total: 320km

The air conditioning was slightly better than the previous night, but still not up to the standard expected. Never mind, we didn’t have to be up at the crack of dawn to ride too many km today.

After breakfast, we donned the cycle gear and rode out to the Botanic Garden and Natural History Museum. We are riding to give the knees a rest as they are feeling a little sore. We bought Keen sandals with us for walking and they’re great but proper walking shoes would be better on hard footpaths and cobbled streets. We spent about 45 minutes wandering through the exhibits, most of which are fine examples of taxidermy. Some of them seemed so lifelike they were about to jump out and grab you! We didn’t spend too much time in the gardens as the breeze was still very lazy and cool. The garden is spread over a 5 ha area with the east section being a traditional garden with flower beds, a lawn and a bowling area (we didn’t see the bowling area, and there were not too many flowers in beds). The west section is the arboretum in the style of an old English garden, while the centre is the Botanical Garden. The bit we photographed is the Botanical section and has a number of signs telling you about all the virtues of good eating and some myths. Forgot to take photos of the signs!

Onwards to the Port du Canal to check out our route for tomorrow. We stopped off at St Bénigne Cathedral (11th century) and and Church of St Philibert as we’d missed them yesterday. The Church was closed for renos as it seems to have been damaged during the last round of storms. The Cathedral had a little ‘wow’ factor, but not the best we’ve seen. The other reason for going there was to enter the crypt to visit the tomb of St Benigne. Unfortunately, as with most of Europe these days, the crypt is undergoing major renovations and will reopen in December this year. The guide book says that Dijon is a town with 100 bell towers, the highest and most spectacular is St Bénigne’s at 93m high.

The porch of St Philibert served as a place for election of the town’s mayors until the French Revolution. The church was reconstructed during the full bloom of Romanesque Burgundian art in the mid 12th century. During the revolution it became storage room for salt; why not, salt was a must-have staple and who would think to look in an old church for salt?

Off to the Port Canal area of Dijon. Firstly we stopped at the Chapel of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem (Chapelle Saint Croix de Jèrusalem). You had to buy a ticket to get in and as we have seen our fair share of churches in Dijon, we admired it for the outside and moved on. When we got to the Port, Greg recognised it from 2019. The canal is full of what looks like oxygen weed and not much else, apart from some boats and ducks/geese. As we were about to head for home, we spied a boulangerie/patisserie near the Port, and as it was almost lunch time we decided that we had better support the locals. 45 minutes later, after a lovely fresh baguette each, we set off for home.

After a rest and some quiet time, we went for another walk into and around the city, back home via the supermarket for dinner supplies. We have both enjoyed Dijon very much and think that we’ve covered just about everything we wanted to see. There’s a good chance we’ll be back someday so it doesn’t really matter.