07 April 2018

A day outdoors in the Beaujolais vineyards

One of the points of going on the trip to the Bourbonnais, with a day trip to Beaujolais, was to get Tasha the Sheltie puppy used to traveling around in the car and spending nights in new, unfamiliar surroundings. Another was just for us: it was a break from the low-grade cabin fever we'd been suffering from. We'd had a very rainy and dismal winter, I then had to make a emergency trip to the U.S. because my mother was dying. Also, Walt and I both had very bad colds that lasted for more than a month.


Going to see the Beaujolais region, which we'd somehow never visited before, turned out to be a great way to spend one of the very few sunny and mild days of this hiver horrible. I was glad to be outside all day. I wanted to see new sights and enjoy driving around in the Citroën. I wanted the feeling of freedom that had been missing from life for a few months, and I needed to breathe fresh air.


Beaujolais was not at all what I personally expected it to be. I imagined it green and hilly; it turned out to be more brown and almost mountainous. It wasn't better or worse, but just different from what I had imagined. The vineyards cover fairly steep east-facing hillsides running down to the Saône River, and off in the distance you can see the snow-covered Alps. That surprised me.


Régnié-Durette, where we picnicked at noon and I took these photos, is at about 300 meters of elevation — a thousand feet — if I'm reading the map correctly. There was a festive atmosphere in the middle of the village (pop. 1,000), which was neat and clean. A little carnival with bumper cars and other attractions was set up on the square in front of the church.


People working the carnival were preparing their mid-day meal and getting ready to sit out on the little front porches of their trailers to eat and drink. There was a clothesline behind the church, just a few meters from our picnic table, and people were drying their laundry. A young woman came to take some dry clothes in and wished us a cheerful Bon appétit ! as we ate our sandwiches and enjoyed a glass of the Régnié red wine.

4 comments:

  1. How nice to see the Alps in the distance! What lovely countryside. The bumper cars are a hoot - I haven't those in years and years.

    Sorry you two were sick for so long this winter. The cold/flu going around here in Socal was also quite bad this year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I brought a bad cold back from N.C. and passed it on to Walt. He was sick for three or four weeks, and my cold lingered for about a month and a half. A friend who lives in Normandy told me she had a cold and cough for most of January and well into February. Her doctor told her that this year's cold virus was one that caused symptoms lasting a month or more in most cases.

      Delete
  2. The flu is supposedly still going on in the US. What a year for it! I'm glad you had sunshine for this trip.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We were really lucky. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday were sunny, dry days, and Wednesday we had only a few light showers. The weather in N.C. when I was there in February was pretty nice, as usual, but the rest of the winter was miserably dreary and damp.

      Delete

What's on your mind? Qu'avez-vous à me dire ?