Based on my vast experience of about half a dozen days in the region, mostly in transit, I have to say that Burgundy is one of my favourite regions of France. It’s hard to say exactly why.
The countryside is a solid seven out of ten throughout. It is usually nice, occasionally drab, and rarely spectacular; a mixture of patchy woodland and agriculture, without the extensive monocultures that would exist without the rolling hills. It is an easy landscape to travel through. The hills and valleys hide extensive terroirs, regions that are home to their own wine, cheese, livestock breeds and even sweets that originated in response to the land. Perhaps because of the range of microclimates, geology and soils, Bourgogne is filled with so many terroirs, local and regional; from the winegrowing hills west of Mâcon and the beef of Charolles, to Dijon mustard and Époisses – a cheese so aromatic it is supposedly banned on the Paris metro – and a thousand other products that you might only find if you happened to go into the right shop in the right town, perhaps even on the right day. It makes travelling interesting, bringing something new and interesting to every stop.
We started our trip through Bourgogne with a stop in Auxerre, the main town in a département that has only recently become administratively part of Burgundy. It’s a place that seems to consistently punch above its weight. Football fans will remember the likes of Eric Cantona, Philllipe Menes and Djibril Cisse honed their skills at the local club, AJ Auxerre, before making it big, and the team made regular appearances in European competitions in the 1990s and 2000s. Impressive stuff for a town of just 30,000 people, and regularly outshining much bigger French cities. Similarly, the cathedral is enormous and grand for a town its size, as if built for an anticipated expansion that never happened. The town itself is set on a bend of the river Yonne and commands a good strategic position, with most of the older buildings set on a small hill that rises from it. There is plenty of evidence of occupation from the Roman period onwards but the town’s heyday was in the medieval period when most of the old quarter was built. We spent a really nice half day exploring the town, enjoying lunch in the square, taking in the exhibition of works on loans from the Centre Pompidou at the Abbey of Saint-Germain, and messing about in the fountains by the river. After a final mandatory stop for a photo outside the football stadium, we were off again. A few hours could easily have turned into a few days in this pleasant little town.
Our designation for the next few days was the even smaller town of Avallon, deep into Bourgogne and on the northern edge of the Morvan Regional Natural Park. Our friendly campsite here was set in what was probably an old quarry on the banks of the river Cousin, under the ramparts of the hilltop town. It was a fairly quiet and – apart from one landlord who shouted at us for daring to sit at a table he hadn’t wiped down yet – welcoming place. The natural park itself is classic Bourgogne countryside, but with a higher proportion of wooded areas, the extent of which only really became apparent when we spent a day hiking through it. This was an area where the French Resistance thrived in World War Two, and backed by the British SAS they never let the Germans rest. The Germans in turn took revenge by burning and looting entire villages, most notably at Dun-les-Places. There are so many hidden trails cross-crossing the landscape, so many hidden valleys, so many folds and blind summits, and the local hunters’ and farmers’ knowledge of these would have given them an almost insurmountable advantage. There is still immense collective pride in the defiance and resilience of that generation.
Avallon is of course an almost-namesake of the mythical Arthurian island of Avalon, and I was interested to find out – from my clever wife no less – that the words share the same root, meaning ‘(place of the) apple tree’ in Welsh and Gaulish respectively. Gaulish is an extinct language but around 150-300 modern French words have a Gaulish root, many of them names for natural things like species of trees, birds and mammals. It was fascinating to find a Gaulish placename so far from the Atlantic-facing western coasts of Europe where we would expect to find it. In fact, Vecingetorix rallied the Gaulish tribes against Caesar less than 100km to the south at Bibracte, so perhaps it’s not such a surprise. Perhaps defiance in the face of an invading force has been in the blood around here for a while.
Our last visit was the hilltop town of Vézelay, home to an excellent little brewery and also a jumping-off point for the Camino de Santiago. These may seem unrelated attributes, but as both a brewer and a pilgrim they seem important. It’s an understated little place, with a main street largely pedestrianised to accommodate artists and craftsmen, attracting nowhere near the hordes you might expect. The Abbey at the top of the hill was surrounded with ecclesiastical buildings and a lovely green space, with good views and just enough trees to provide shade. The views across the region were exceptional.
And the bike ride? I had a nice one planned, taking in some of the villages around the Cousin valley, but when I woke the birdsong in the campsite was so lovely I decided to just stay in bed and listen to it. And that is probably as nice a metaphor for our time in Bourgogne as I can find.
