5 February 2024 – Follow the Saone

Miles driven today = 135

Total Miles to date = 659

Until the bin men turned up at 6:20 this morning we had nothing to disturb us in the car park at Fixin other than the owls in the woods.  I slept like the proverbial log.

Google Maps gave us the usual 3 alternatives for making our way down towards Lyon on un-tolled roads.  Give or take 10 minutes, all of them would take us roughly the same amount of time, so we plumped for the one which most closely followed the course of the Saone River.  We picked up the D974, which is otherwise known as the "Route de Grand Crus" and it quickly became apparent why, with groups of farm workers out pruning the vast acreages of vineyards which ran along the foot of the Cote d’Or escarpment to our right.

We passed through Beaune and Chalon-sur-Saone, where we got to see the river close up for the first time and were surprised at how broad it was.  A little further on we scheduled a supermarket stop at E Leclerc in Lux but they apparently didn’t want our Euros judging by the 2.8 metre height barriers at the entrance so we took our custom on to the Auchan at Sennecey-Le-Grand and restocked our fridge and wine locker there instead.

At Macon we crossed the river via the impressive Pont Saint Laurent.  We stopped in a rather municipal looking carpark for a sandwich and then shortly afterwards I was daydreaming and took the wrong exit at a roundabout.  This didn’t initially seem to be a major issue as the Google Maps revised route would supposedly only take us an additional 2 minutes, but we soon found ourselves crossing back over the Saone at Anse and heading under 2 bridges which may or may not have been low enough to sardine can the roof off the van.  We weren’t about to try our luck and took a bit of a detour to somewhere we could go over rather than under the railway line.

The other issue with our revised route was that, rather than bringing us neatly in around Lyon’s ring road, we approached through the Tunnel sous Fourviere, which dumped us slap bang in the middle of the city.  Two more crossings of the Saone ensued and I was more than a little frazzled and ready for a well deserved bottle of Jenlain by the time we re-emerged to the South of the City and got ourselves parked up.

We are booked in for the next 2 nights at our first proper campsite of the trip, Camping des Barolles in the suburban town of St-Genis-Laval.  It’s a somewhat pricey €24.50 a night without hook up (they want another €6.50 for that!) but it’s an easy bus ride from here into central Lyon and is one of the few campsites in this part of the World which is actually open in February.  There were relatively few vans here when we arrived but it has since filled up significantly, predominantly with German and Dutch rigs, some of which are huge.

We got here a little after 2, which is when I thought we would be able to get in and set up, but we found that Reception was actually locked up until 3 so we used the time to fill up the fresh water tank and give the van a sweep out of 6 days worth of accumulated detritus.

After a predominantly grey and cold day it’s been lovely and sunny since we got here so we took our selves off for a bit of a leg stretch before tea.  There’s a huge sporting complex just across the road but just beyond that are some old fortress walls.

The former Castle Beauregard is now given over to a very pleasant park with some impressive trees.

It also gave us a view out over St-Genis-Laval and its Church.

We’ve ordered our croissants for the morning from the campsite shop and have also purchased 24 hour “Libertie” bus/tram/metro tickets, so tomorrow we shall go and see what France’s second City has to offer.

6 February 2024 - Lyon