Cycling to France in Switzerland!

Today I cycled around 80k, going to the Swiss town of Delemont and back, via Laufen. The strange (but not unusual) thing here in Switzerland is that you stay in the same country but the whole environment changes. You see, Delemont is at the edge of the French part of Switzerland - so suddenly the signs change from German to Swiss, but it's an intagible change. There is no border between the two distinct parts of the same country - it's just different.

A tad too much cycling today

It was a normal Sunday as we awoke too late (or later than we really intended) to have an early start to any cycling today. Anyway it didn't stop us getting out and cycling off to Rheinfelden and Bad Sackingen for a small beer and a short 50k+ ride. However, for whatever reason we were a little tired on the way back and we hit a strong headwind which soon tired us out as we struggled home. Mind you watching the Tour de France on TV this evening made us realise what really hard cycling entailed.

Another white wine for the lady....

Of course, one of the main reasons for choosing this part of France to meet up was, aside from the geographical symmetry, the potential wine tasting bonanza. Today I volunteered to drive the others around as though I like my white wine I prefer a drop of red. We spent the first part of the day sightseeing in Tonnerre and the neighbouring chateaux. Whilst enjoyable it was a mere prelude to the main part of the day.

On Friday evening we had drunk a rather nice white wine from Chitry and as this was very close to it's much more famous neighbour, Chablis, we decided to visit them both. What a good choice that turned out to be as we stumbled into (and three stumbled out of) a wonderful local wine producer there. Severine & Lionel Jacquet are small producers of the local wine and we sampled their red, rosé, cremant and rosé cremant. It was really superb and we purchased the odd case or 6 before departing to Chablis. Of course, they couldn't leave without a little tasting here and luckily Claire found a particular Grand Cru that she liked!!

Auxerre & Joigny - 2 beautiful towns.

Actually I should include a 3rd as we had a coffee in the town of Sens, very close to our small hotel. I've actually stayed in this town before, on the way to an Arsenal match with Auxerre in the Champions League - a fairly dull 1-0 win with the only thing of note being Jermaine Pennant's debut in the competition! We grabbed lunch from the market in Sens and eat it by the river at Joigny. A town that I had visited twice before; once during said visit to watch Arsenal and the secon when I cycled around France in 2003.

So onwards to Auxerre we went (originally we were going to visit Chablis as well but that had to wait till Sunday!). The weather perked up and we enjoyed the river, the sunshine and a jolly nice day.

Off to the Bourgogne...

Today we face a small 400km drive to the wonderful wine region of the Bourgogne in France. Here we will spend a weekend with Monica & Peter as it's approximately halfway between us in Basel and their boat in La Roche Bernard. The weather forecast isn't looking good for the journey but not too bad for the weekend. Here's the small hotel that we stayed in.

Euro 2008 Fans Montage

Some images of fans during the European Championships.

Video Review of Euro 2008 Working