Day 9 – Veneray les Laumes to Nuits St George

Hurrah! It’s raining!!! Never have I been so delighted for a downpour! It should now be cooler and also, I could lie in until 8am! Luxury! Another long ramble beside the Burgundy canal today; surprisingly the temperature climbed pretty rapidly once the clouds dissipated but never above 35C! I feel like a hot weather cycling pro now! Well, better than when I started! I really am a cold weather sort of person and would prefer subzero!

I came across my first tunnel today at Pouilly-en-Auxois; thus far the canal has meandered a lot to avoid the little obstacles, but today the tunnel makers won the battle and it was quite impressive! Not least the cycle route follows the several Kilometre long tunnels directly overhead, as marked by the air shafts!

Thus far my canal cycling has been ever so slightly ascending, with every lock climbing upwards; not quite alpine ascents but never the less rising! Now the canal started descending down, a delightful cycle, not least as I found a café stop at Vandenesse-en-Auxois. I came across a beautiful hillside village, Chateau Neuf, perched atop a hillside, complete with Rapunzel-esque tower! I have admired this many times before whilst driving up and down the autoroute du soleil (or du neige!), the A6.

I suppose it is not surprising that a modern highway should follow the same route as an old canal; the original canal engineers likely had a sensible appraisal of the topography and obstacles along the way. So today the A6 and the canal wend their way, interweaving along. I have pondered over the last few days whether we may be about to have a renaissance of canals as a means of traffic, particularly for freight; rising fuel costs, traffic congestion, a desire for greener transport all may be about to see a turn of hand in the canal industry. Along the way I have seen many grain silos and old, now disused, warehouses and wharfs. I just hope the cycleways continue alongside this change! Before descending to the plains of the Saone and the Rhone valley near Beaune, the motorway soars upwards on a viaduct. My little route departs the canal and heads for the hills too; only 36C in the sun today! A fresh day! The route steadily climbs upwards and I am distracted along the way by various butterflies, and wild flowers and even wild strawberries! The terrain then became a high plateau of small crop fields, interspersed with copses.

Yesterday my mum asked me why I do cycle trips such as this; was it the sense of achievement/ to push myself? I replied that I enjoyed the fact that one can travel so far on such a simple machine and under one’s own effort. But today summiting this peak and seeing the view across the vast plain outstretched below, and a hint of the mountains to come in the far distance, I viscerally felt why I do such rides as these; I wept; tears of joy that I had reached this far, and cycled all this way!

As I descended down through the vineyards of St George towards our rest stop for the night I smiled.