France is criss-crossed with a network of marked walking routes the shortest of which are the yellow PR (petites randonées). Many villages will have an information board showing a map of the walks in their area with some details about the length, level of difficulty and time required. So, you look at the map, decide where you want to go according to how energetic you feel, and set off. Every so often there will be a marker pointing you in the right direction. Fool proof you'd think.
Whilst visiting the tourist office in Santenay the helpful young man there showed us a photo of a fully restored local windmill telling us was that this was the last working windmill in Burgundy. "It's not far," he assured us, whilst waving in a vaguely easterly direction. Or maybe it was more north....Anyway, after consulting the map in the village square and discovering the windmill route was classed as suitable for families and required 2 hours, two of us decided that we'd go for a post lunch stroll and managed to dragoon a reluctant third. Our fourth crew member, sensibly as it turned out, wasn't to be persuaded out of the siesta option and would meet us back at the village cafe in 2 hours.
Temperatures in the mid 30s aren't ideal for walking but they've been that for weeks now and if we stayed in or on the boat every day we'd see nothing beyond the canal. Our reluctant walker decided bringing a bike would be a good idea. And it was - for about half an hour. We stopped at the village shop for a couple of bottles of water and then gathered around the map once again to verify where the walk began. A word of advice - sometimes the person who applies the 'vous etes ici' (you are here) sticker is a bit slapdash. You may not be precisely 'here' - more 'in the vicinity'. And so it was that we began walking - in entirely the wrong direction.
The bike was abandoned beside a steep stony track as we struggled ever upwards through the slopes of a vineyard. What sort of super family, we wondered, was this walk rated for? Every so often there would be yellow arrow painted on a stone or tree reassuring us that we were on the right track. Eventually we had climbed high above the valley and above the vineyards where there was a spectacular view - but not of a windmill. The problem with walking to a particular destination rather than just 'going for a walk' is that you always think that having come so far the destination must be just around the next corner or at the top of the next slope and so, lured on by those yellow signs, we foolishly kept giving it just another 5 minutes. Realisation dawned at the top of the ridge when the track clearly turned neither north nor east but very definitely in the quite opposite direction. The Petite Randonnée we were following was an entirely different one to the one we wanted. To add insult to injury on the way back down we spotted the windmill far below us (yes, east) and not far from the village. If we hadn't been so intent on struggling up the hills and looking for yellow marks (sirens) we might have spotted it much earlier and saved ourselves the pain. However, we would have missed a fantastic view of the Saone valley stretching all the way to Challon which, to be honest, was much more impressive than a windmill.
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| Still in possession of the bike and enthusiam |
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