Chateauneuf and Vezelay

Tuesday, September 22 -- We awakened to a bit of rain and cloudy skies this morning.  Nevertheless Dick and I made a trip to the bakery for croissants, and things began to look better.  Undismayed by rain, we packed our umbrellas and departed in the direction of Auxois.

Before long you notice the relatively intact castle of Chateauneuf watching over the flat open country and the Burgundy Canal.  This castle and its imposing 12th century stronghold bear witness to the strategic position the village occupied between Dijon and Autun.

The medieval streets a lined with the stone houses built by rich Burgundy merchants from the 14, 15 and 16 centuries. and lead up to the viewpoints which offers splendid all-round vistas in most directions.  Rick Steves' said not to bother with paying for entrance to the castle itself, so we did not.  Instead, we wandered about, looking at the empty streets and thinking that this must be a very different place on sunny,

summer days when it is filled with tourists.  Had there been a good looking restaurant we might have stayed and given them some business, but it seemed a better idea to continue on,

Just below Chateauneuf was the Burgundy canal where a canal boat, the Rendez-vous, was unloading its passengers for a tour of the castle, we presumed.  The canal, 150 miles long, connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea via the Seine and the Yonne to the Saône and Rhône.  There are 189 locks along the way. These barge tours might be be a comfortable way to sample the wines of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and the the departments of Yonne and Côte-d'Or.

We motored on to the mountain top village of Vézelay. 

The rain either continued or threatened the entire time, and it was getting into afternoon, so we accepted an invitation to have lunch in a little shop on the main street that had room for no more than four or five tables.We had croque-monsieur and some local wine by the glass -- not especially memorable, but it counted as lunch and offered a look at local life.

After lunch, and in the rain, we continued walking up the street to the main goal, the Basilica Saint Madeleine, on the top of the hill. The Benedictine abbey church, now the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine (aka Saint Mary Magdalene), has a complicated program of imagery in sculpted capitals and portals over the doors and it is said by the guidebooks to be one of the outstanding masterpieces of Burgundian Romanesque art and architecture. It was also

interesting to note that Vézelay stands at the beginning of one of the major routes through France for pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela.  The carvings and sculptures over the doors were remarkable, even if the interior of the basilica was rather plain. But what goes unnoticed by most visitors is that not only the basilica's orientation, but also its internal structure, are designed in accord with the position of the earth relative to the sun. Every year, on John the Baptist's feast day, at the full midday of the summer solstice, the sun's light coming through the southern clerestory windows create luminous spots that exactly shine in the middle of the nave with a rigorous precision.

The nave of the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine

Vézelay from below

We returned to Pommard through the Vallée du Cousin, a very scenic drive on a country road.  The route follows the picturesque, narrow, wooded valley of the rushing River Cousin and ends up in the town of  Avallon.  I was driving, so we don't have any pictures of this part of the trip, but there are some good ones here on Fickr.

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