Avallon's old town (2)

The tower in the first photo below is called the Tour de l'Horloge, which stands 49 meters (161 ft) tall. It was built in 1456, after Avallon had suffered badly during the 100 Years' War — its walls and older defensive towers had been torn down, so it was defenseless. The Tour de l'Horloge (clock tower) was designed to be a watchtower from which invaders could be seen before they arrived in the town. A few years after it was built, a bell that weighed 500 lbs. was installed at the top of the tower so that the populace could be alerted if danger threatened. This is the vieille ville (old town) quarter of Avallon, whose name derives from the Celtic word for "apple tree"; there were extensive apple orchard in the area in the Middle Ages. (Thanks to Wikipédia for all this information.)

    

    

    

Zipping thru Avallon

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After our brief stop in the rain at Vézelay. We continued on to the big town of Avallon, population 6,500. We were in hurry by then, because the appointed hour for our gîte check-in was rapidly approaching. We mainly spent a few minutes walking around the 11th- and 12th-century église Saint-Lazare. Right next to it stands what remains of a much older chapel that was dedicated to Saint-Pierre, a statue of whom you see below. Both the big church and the little chapel have suffered greatly over the years from damage inflicted by lightning and wind storms. We didn't get to go inside either building because we had the dog to look after.

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I don't know what this sculpture of a frog on the street near the church was all about. The yellow house next to it is a museum owned by the town of Avallon. The house was badly damaged when the bell tower of the chuch next to it was blown over by high winds in a storm in 1633. Both the house and church had to be re-built. I feel like we didn't do Avallon justice and I'd like to go back there one day, as well as to another big town, Autun, which is not far south. It was time to continue our drive toward Môlay, Chablis, and Tonnerre.

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Lunch in Pouilly, and then Vézelay

We ended up having lunch in Pouilly-sur-Loire in this eatery. It's called Les 200 Bornes. Une borne in this sense is the French equivalent of a milepost along the highway. In other words, the filling station/restaurant is 200 kilometers south of Paris. It's on the old nationale 7 highway, which was the pre-autoroute road taken by people leaving Paris for summer vacations in the south of France. It's kind of a French route 66.

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The food wasn't bad. It was pretty simple — the kind of inexpensive lunch you might find in thousands of little restaurants and cafés in France. The starter course was a céleri remoulade salad and some salade macédoine (mixed vegetables with a mayonnaise dressing), alongside a few slices of saucisson sec, bread, and butter. The main course was a couple of chicken drumsticks with a curry sauce and a side dish of a mix of white and wild rice. It was nothing to rave or write home about, but it was satisfying. If I remember correctly, we were the only customers in the restaurant. Callie the collie stayed in the car while we dined.

Before we left town, we went to the winery below and bought a few bottles of the local wines. In Pouilly, they make two white wines. One is called Pouilly Fumé, made with Sauvignon Blanc grapes. I remember a similar wine called Fumé Blanc in California. It's called fumé (smoked or smoky) because when the grapes are ripe they're covered with a gray "bloom" or film that looks like it could be fine ashes. The other wine goes by the name of Pouilly sur Loire and is a sweeter white wine made from Chasselas grapes. It's usually served at apéro time rather than with a meal.

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The drive to our gîte took us through several towns I had visited before — Varzy and Clamecy with CHM in 2011 — and Vézelay, which Walt and I had seen years before (1993, we think). This time, we stopped on the highway and I took these pictures of Vézelay and its famous church. I think it was raining when I took them.

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Below are the unprocessed originals of the two photos of the Vézelay skyline (No. 7 and no 8 above).

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From Sancerre to Pouilly-sur-Loire

We didn't stop in Sancerre in October 2014 because Walt and I had been there before. And I went back there in 2015, I think it was, with CHM. As with many wine towns and villages (Bouzy in Champagne, Vouvray in Touraine), the area area around Sancerre is fairly agricultural and almost industrial. You see a lot of tractors and trucks pulling trailers.

Our destination was Pouilly-sur-Loire, an equally famous wine town as Sancerre, where equally fine white wines are made, mostly with the same grape (Sauvignon Blanc). The bridge over the Loire, with the Berry province on one side and Burgundy on the other, is a simple, low-slung bridge. There's no significant boat or barge traffic this far up the Loire river.

This is what we saw as we drove into Pouilly (pop. 1,621), looking for a restaurant I had read about. It was called Chez Mémère — I just found a newspaper article saying it closed down permanently in 2020... a victim, partly, of the pandemic, I bet. The French word mémère is an informal term meaning grandmother, grandma, granny.

We were tempted to stop at this winery, which we saw before we found the restaurant, but by then we were really hungry and thought we'd have a better chance of getting a table at the restaurant the earlier we arrived there. The winery is called the Domaine Masson-Blondelet. Here's a link to its web site.

We needn't have hurried to get to Chez Mémère, though. The restaurant was not at all full when we walked in, but we were turned away. No reservation? Tut tut tut. No way. Who would have thought a restaurant with such a down-home name, located in such a tiny town, would be all booked up on a Tuesday at lunchtime in late October? Welcome to Burgundy!

We asked if there were any other restaurants in town. The Chez Mémère staff said there was just one other, on the south edge of town. So we headed there to get something to eat before continuing our drive into the heart of Burgundy. But not before I snapped this photo of a stained-window at Mémère's place.