Pouring with rain first thing. I hung around in the hotel until they chucked me out at 11 o’clock. The rain was easing and I wandered through the town. It has statues of bears scattered about.
As I was drifting around a woman passed me, on her way to church, and said what sounded like “pas de button”, she repeated it, “No buttons”?? My French is limited.
Perhaps she was a Mennonite?
Annnie
by Guilliame Apollinaire
tr. Anne Hyde Greet
On the shores of Texas
Between Mobile and Galveston there is
A great garden filled with roses
There is also a villa
Which is one huge rose
A woman passes often
In the gardem alone
And when I pace the road edged with lime trees
Our eyes meet
As she is Mennonite
Her rose trees and her garmets have no buttons
My jacket’s missing two
That lady and I observe almost the same rite
I don’t think Apollinaire ever went outside France and Belgium (in trenches WW1). But he was a surrealist, and whimsical.
The route follows farm tracks out of Saulieu and then dives down a narrow rocky gulley overhung with brambles, wet brambles, I emerged wet and scratched. Then lakes and marsh which you cross on duck-boards, two planks wide, requires some concentration when wet and slippery. Luckily the marsh isn’t too deep.
Around 1 p.m. I arrived at Alligny, there was a wooden shelter in the square, so I sat and ate the remains of yesterday’s patisserie. I noticed a museum over the road “Musée des nourrices et des enfants de l’Assistance Publique”. Museum of nannies. More to the point it was open on a Sunday and had a cafe. Had to have a look.
Apparently the Morvan, being rural, poor and close to Paris, was an area that supplied many nannies to the rich of Paris, also took-in thousands of abandoned children. Most of the children abandonned as babies in Paris (about 5,000 per year through the 19th century) were sent to Morvan and brought-up on farms, the farmers received a monthly allowance from the Paris government for this. It continued right up to the 1970s.
I dried out, had Grande Cafe Creme and honey crepe at the cafe.
I then abandonned the off-road stuff and took a winding road route on very quiet hilly roads to Lac Les Settons.
That night I went to the only restaurant open nearby and presented the pdf of my NHS vaccine cretificate in lieu of the French “pass sanitaire” (covid passport) this had worked twice previously, but this time the QR code didn’t register on the app of the waitress, so I wasn’t permitted to eat there. I asked for a takeaway, thinking of a sandwich but they insisted on giving me a microwaved plastic package of ham slices with dauphinose ptatoes and mushroom sauce. I ate it at a picnic table overlooking the lake in the misty evening twilight. With a bottle of beer. Not bad.
Some worry about the pass sanitaire now, since it is needed for all restaurants and hotels.