We're pleased to provide you with a selection of useful Burgundy websites on this page. For others, click Favorite Websites or choose one of the icons in the site's right margin. The websites we've selected are designed to help you in booking hotels and restaurants along the way, and finding detailed information about the Burgundy region, including transportation, history, culture and more.

A full list of our favorite hotels, restaurants, museums, monuments, wineries and scenic spots in Burgundy will appear in the book and DVD. In the meantime, if you'd like to be in touch with us for more information, or would like to inquire about setting up an accompanied tour through Burgundy (or the Midi), please email info@parisparisthebook.com and type TREK QUERY in the subject line.

Burgundy regional tourism office: www.bourgogne-tourisme.com/

Morvan regional park: www.parcdumorvan.org

Morvan tourism office: www.morvan-tourisme.org

The Museum of Celtic Civilization at Mont Beuvray: www.bibracte.fr

Morvan cultural heritage site: www.patrimoinedumorvan.org

Museums in Burgundy: www.musees-bourgogne.org

Cluny municipal tourist office: www.cluny-tourisme.com

The “Friends of Saint James” and the pilgrim’s route from Vézelay (site in French only), provides info on the classic trek south from Vézelay (not the offbeat route we took): www.amis-saint-jacques-de-compostelle.asso.fr/

The Confraternity of Saint James, a UK-based organization, has info on the various pilgrimage routes across France, but not the route we took across Burgundy, of course: www.csj.org.uk/

Vézelay ranks among France's best-loved villages. Its basilica of Mary Magdalene is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and attracts nearly 1 million visitors each year.

Vezelay in spring, copyright Alison Harris

Yet for many people outside France the name does not ring familiar bells or raise flags of any particular color. The village, perched on a hogback hill, is about 200 kilometers (130 miles) due south of Paris, in northern Burgundy. (To see an enlarged version of Alison's photo, click on the image then scroll).

We started our trek here, arriving on the day before Easter, 2006.

The bell tolled five times as we approached the basilica. It has suffered more than most French ecclesiastical properties from the ravages of time, the wars of religion, the Revolution and the fanciful rebuilding of 19th-century architects... The bell tolled six as we were leaving. But we returned over and over again during the Easter weekend. The church was full at times, empty at others.

Where to stay and eat in Vézelay
Hôtel de la Poste et du Lion d’Or
Place du Champ de Foire
03.86.33.21.23
www.laposte-liondor.com

Over the last four centuries countless pilgrims—religious, gastronomic, cultural and commercial—have supped and slept in this 17^th-century hotel, we hope as well as we did. For, as many of you know, the traveling masons and cathedral-builders of centuries gone by liked to say au lit on dort. “In bed one sleeps.” That sounds an awful lot like Au Lion d’Or and is a very old and a very polished chestnut. But though I’ve traveled widely in France in the twenty years I’ve lived here, I had never heard it said, nor had I understood why so many hotels are named for the ‘golden lion,’ until our patient innkeeper at Vézelay explained… In the hotel’s unexpectedly elegant dining room, a small young girl dressed in Easter Sunday best seemed lost among the heavy damasks and carpets. From the depth of her Louis XV-style chair she pronounced the snails good, les escargots sont bons! Over the ensuing hour this same child proceeded to consume a large portion of pork jowl and potatoes, as I did, also approving of them, then savored the cheese platter—memorable, the ripe Epoisse!—and a luscious dessert. Happily she showed no signs of obesity, a paradox in the making, and it was a joy to hear such a young girl, perhaps six years old, enjoying so many grown-up foods. But why should snails and pork jowl and pungent cheeses be for adults? Some French children still learn to eat properly, and widely, stimulating their taste buds, and that may prove their salvation. The Hôtel de la Poste et du Lion d’Or’s setting of pleasantly creaking floors and staircases, comfortable pre-Revolutionary-style furniture and thick timbers, carried on in our top-floor room, whose best feature was the view: weathered stone buildings and a rambling manor poised on the emerald-green, grassy heights of Vézelay...

Though it was settled by Gallic tribes, prospered as an ancient Roman village, and, since the Middle Ages, has boasted its own, massive church, Saint-Pere-sous-Vézelay is best known not for history or religious pilgrimages but for one of France's three-star Michelin "temples of gastronomy”—it’s an haut lieu de pelerinage gastronomique—the appropriately named l'Esperance. The name means “Hope.” It’s the fief of Marc Meneau.

St-Pere, copyright Alison HarrisThe bells of the village church, however, are still powerful enough to drown out the sound of knives and forks, and the passing trucks and cars on the busy roads that run nearby (to hear them, click on the image). On Easter, the bells rang so loud that you could hear them for miles around. They drew us in. Yet when we arrived at the church stood empty. We returned three times in two days. It was always empty.

Marc Meneau’s L’Espérance has three Michelin stars. It ranks among France’s so-called haut lieux de la gastronomie, a culinary, gastronomical pilgrimage site. Meneau generously took time to speak to us about himself and his family, and to share his views on pilgrimage, food and the relationship between gastronomy and religion. A native son whose family has been in the village for at least 500 years, Meneau sees food as essential to hospitality. The growing, preparation and eating of food is, he says, “sacred.” Several years ago Meneau and the now-deceased baker Lionel Poilâne actually lobbied the Vatican to get the sin of gluttony downgraded—one of MM’s many, often provocative initiatives in favor of a culinary culture free of guilt. The interview lasted half an hour. Click Marc Meneau for a 4-minute teaser—the complete interview would be too long to post on this website. When Hit the Road Jacques comes out in book and multi-media DVD format you’ll be able to hear a longer version.

River Cure, copyright Alison HarrisThe Cure River flows from the heart of the Morvan into the Yonne River (and from there into the Seine), passing Saint-Pere-sous-Vézelay. A few miles south of the village it meanders past a scenic, scallop-shell-shaped site known as Fontaines Salées—salt springs. Neolithic settlers sank wellheads here (several are still visible); salt was long the best preservative available. The salt wells were taken over, in turn, by pre-Roman Gallic inhabitants, followed by the Romans, and the usual suite of invaders from late-Antiquity via the Middle Ages to pre-modern times, when the wells were abandoned... Archeological finds in the first half of the 20th century led to excavations. Wells, Gallic and ancient Roman ruins lend the spot a magical quality.

Vercingétorix, the Gallic warrior who rallied rival tribes at Bibracte in a desperate attempt to defeat Julius Caesar, is something of a national hero in France, especially in the Morvan (and in Brittany, the self-styled last bastion of the Gauls). However Vercingetorix is also a controversial figure, used by nationalist movements in the country since the 19th century as a symbol for their cause. His name is not difficult to pronounce. It's impossible. As we walked across Burgundy I stopped to ask people how to say it. Click here for a Vercingétorix sampler, including an Italian version (as spoken by the director of the Gallic Civilization Museum at Bibracte, who's French), versions by self-proclaimed "direct descendants" of the Gauls, by an African-French girl from a "problem" housing project in the outskirts of Paris, and three hypothetical Latin and Gallic versions as spoken by Rob Urie, a Morvan guide originally from... Australia! Ironically, no one knows what "Vercingetorix" might have sounded like in the mouth of the warrior himself. Almost everything we know about the Gauls comes to us via Latin writers, Caesar foremost among them...

A pair of amorous donkeys frollicked in a pasture as we hiked from Cure toward Saint-André en Morvan. The male was not pleased to see us and made his feelings known. His complaints were so tragicomical, inspiring instant hilarity among listeners, that I played his lament over and over as we walked, especially when we were tired or cranky.

One blight common to all wealthy nations is the quantity of bored, hormone-driven young men. We encountered quite a few in Burgundy's outback, flying down dirt roads and even park trails on motocross bikes. Generally they came upon us and disappeared so fast that I wasn't quick enough to capture them on my recorder. But this one came by several times--over and over in fact. Elsewhere on this site I will be posting an Open Letter to the French Minister of the Environment about the motocross problem on certain long-distance hiking trails in park areas. Dutch, Belgian and Italian motocross practitioners who can no longer destroy parklands in their own countries now come to the Morvan (the wild and wooly moutains between Vézelay and Autun) in particular because they feel they can get away with anything--there's no one around...

The Lac des Settons is among France's largest and oldest reservoirs, built during the Second Empire in the mid-19th century. It captures the flow of the Cure River, and is key to regulating the flow of the Seine. Sailboats and old-fashioned ferries crisscrossed it as we walked along it's western shore...

Robert and Solange Ducreux with mayor of Anost, copyright Alison HarrisWe met Robert and Solange Ducreux in Anost , a stronghold of the Resistance in World War II. Ducreux was 18 years old in 1944. He joined the so-called Maquis Socrate based in the thick forests a few miles northwest of Anost... The various "maquis" units concentrated in the Morvan, in part because it is mountainous and has few roads, in part because the Nazis retreated across it from the Atlantic toward the Saone Valley and Alsace... Ducreux spoke in Burgundian dialect to his fellow fighters, so we asked him to say a few things for us in patois. It proved a challenge, for he hadn't spoken in dialect for years. Interestingly, the Morvan patois verb form for "I am" is "isseu" (in French it's "je suis"), and sounds a lot like the Italian "io sono."

When Julius Caesar rolled into central Gaul—now Burgundy—with his legions (at the behest of an allied Gallic tribe), he found many good roads and fortified villages. The walls the Gauls built were like massive bastions. Unsurprisingly Caesar called the Gallic wall a "murus gallicus."

Murus Gallicus, Bibracte, copyright Alison Harris Archaeologists have rebuilt one at Bibracte, on the Mont Beuvray.  Surprisingly, most Frenchmen and women have never heard of these walls, and when I spoke of them I was met with blank stares. What would Caesar have made of the modern French way of pronouncing his Latin term for a Gallic wall? He probably would have said something like "moo roos gah li cus." Mathilde Gorlier at the Ferme de la Chassange says Murus Gallicus beautifully.

The Ferme de la Chassagne (near Laizy), a Chambre d’hôtes/Table d’hôtes, run by Françoise and Jacques Gorlier, with help from their daughter Mathilde (tel: 03.85.82.39.47) was truly one of the highlights of our trek. How green is my valley, we said after arriving. How dreamy my petting farm dream… The farm’s hillside setting on the southern edge of the Morvan, facing Autun, is ideal: sunny, open, backed by deep, dark woods, far enough from highways to be utterly quiet, yet within minutes of the main road to Autun… This 16-hectare (40-acre) working family farm is startlingly clean, orderly and seemed too perfect to be true, and our hosts, Françoise and Jacques, if ever they tire of their current occupations, should become France’s goodwill ambassadors to the world. Both Burgundians from a pretty village near Cluny, they dreamed of recreating the model farm of their childhood (yes, they were childhood sweathearts, the boy and girl next door). In the mid-1990s they and their children made the dream come true… After a career as a hospital administrator, sunny Françoise rolled up her sleeves and learned the technical side to dairy farming and ranching, before launching into the business of raising livestock (pigs, ducks, geese, cattle, sheep…) and making goat’s cheese… not to mention running a model B&B and cooking up a storm for the stream of guests… Jacques, an affable construction foreman (who directed the building of the Gallic Civilization Museum at Bibracte, threw himself into the remodeling of this 400-year-old farmhouse which sits upon ancient foundations (there’s a neolithic mortar in the boulder outside the front door)… The farm is the real deal, right down to the nitty-gritty of birthing, milking and eventually selling animals that are practically pets. The farmhouse has been beautifully restored from the cellar to the sloping tiled roof, tastefully furnished in an old-fashioned country style, with vast rooms, exposed ceiling timbers, fireplaces big enough to roast an ox in—and functional modern plumbing, comfortable armchairs, big beds and glorious views… Everything we ate came from the farm and was homemade—and too delicious to believe. The butter Françoise churned out was almost orange from carotene; the farmstead cheese she made before our eyes, ditto the fruit tart… In twenty years of eating in France I’ve never supped on a veal-and-mushroom stew as succulent and creamy…

David with sore feet, copyright Alison HarrisThe path to Autun proved dauntingly steep. To reach it from the Ferme de la Chassagne we hiked about 20 kilometers up and over an impressive mountain. With boots pinching, we stopped part way up to commune with the cows.

 

Autun's Roman ramparts, copyright Alison HarrisStill girded by ancient Roman walls, Autun is another of northern Burgundy's unexpectedly wonderful sites. Just south of town we stayed at a wonderful B&B in a reconverted, centuries-old millhouse.

Every village, town and city in France commemorates Victory in Europe (V-E Day), on May 8. We marched into Cluny as the military band played.

For centuries, Cluny's abbey was the largest and richest in the Western world, second only in size to Saint Peter's (not an abbey) in Rome. Cluny controlled hundreds of "franchise" churchs across Europe, a mantel of churchs, as is said poetically. Dominique Jacquot, director of Cluny's tourism office, kindly recited two old sayings for us about Cluny's wealth and extent. The first, loosely translated, states that "Wherever the wind blows it blows revenues back to Cluny." The second saying, again, loosely interpreted: "As the year 1000 dawned, the world seemed to shake off its dreary rags when Cluny wrapped itself in a beautiful white mantel of churches..."

From our room in Cluny’s comfortable Hotel de Bourgogne we looked out at sunset and dawn and heard the crows nesting in the abbey's ruins. Horses at the National Stud Farm across the street neighed…

The Grange du Bois is a hamlet perched high above the Roche de Solutré, site of a fascinating museum of prehistory, and a wonderful place to hike. Cheesemaker Guy Favier at the Grange du Bois told us he feels a meal isn't over until he's had his cheese... and he proudly says so here.

Remember to check back. This website will continue to grow over coming months as I write the book, tentatively entitled HIT THE ROAD JACQUES: A SKEPTICAL PILGRIMAGE ACROSS FRANCE. In the meantime, please email us to inquire about setting up an accompanied tour on the Way of Saint James. You can also pre-order the book or purchase prints of Alison's photos (go to www.alisonharris.com). Write to info@parisparisthebook.com with TREK QUERY in the subject line.

See you again soon! David and Alison