foottoearth

To give you an idea of the area where we are staying: the closest village to our gite is called Chamelet (population 663). It is the region highlighted in red in the map below.  It is about an hour outside of Lyon, by train or by car. 

We need to hike about 2km from our gite to get into Chamelet. This sounds like no big deal, similar to walking from our condo in Vancouver to Granville Island.  However, the countryside in this area is extremely hilly, so we have to travel almost 250m in elevation on that short trip.... which is fine on the way down, and not so great on the way up.  

In preparation for hiking in the French countryside, I pored over googlemaps and calculated distances between our gite and all the closest little villages. Since it would also take a pretty decent effort to get between the villages, I also spent hours on google trying to figure out what types of attractions and facilities there are in each of the aforementioned little villages. It turns out, each village has perhaps one or two amenities.

Chamelet has one restaurant, which for some reason, is Moroccan.  There is also one bar, which is open Mondays and Wednesdays, plus the mornings of Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays until noon.  For your morning drinking needs.  lol.  The bar doubles as a Tabac, as most here do.  Last night (Thursday) there was a ripple of excitement among the locals, because the region's roving pizza truck, Pizzazergues, was in town from 5-9pm.  By 9pm, they were completely sold out.  Looking at the online schedule, it appears it will be back in this area on Sunday, selling pizza in Létra from 5-8:30pm.

Létra (population 820), is the next town, situated about 4-5km away.  Being "much larger" than Chamelet, they have a little Vival corner grocery store selling groceries and bread.  However, you cannot just walk in and buy some bread at the Vival;  you must reserve your bread in advance.  How very French.  Fortunately, Létra also has a bakery open Wednesdays to Sundays, instantly marking the town as one of our prime destinations in the area, and the target of one of our first hikes. Létra also has the requisite bar/tabac, one restaurant, and a cave à vins, making it the easiest way to get all our basic needs met.  However, since the change in elevation is about 250m over that trip, there is a limit to how much one can buy, because on the return trip, one must shlep it over all the hills on one's back.  

In between Chamelet and Létra are several tiny villages consisting of maybe a dozen houses each.  Shown below is La Burie.  

Chamelet is perched right on the axis between the famous Beaujolais wine region of Rhone (Beaujolais Vignoble), the lesser known "forest region" of Beaujolais, known to locals as Beaujolais Vert, and the beautiful fossil-studded golden limestones of the Pierres Dorées region.  Here's a short video so you can get an idea (you don't need sound because it is subtitled in English). 

The closest real "city" is the capital of Beaujolais, Villefranche-sur-Saone (population ~50 000), which takes about 30 mins by car due East.  It is the blue region on the map above.  Since we currently have a rental car, our first stop was Villefranche-sur-Saone to obtain French SIM cards for our cell phones, plus a few other necessities we didn't think to pack, like towels. 

Still under the shock of jet-lag after two straight days of plane travel, it was a welcome relief to walk down a strangely familiar Robson-like street called Rue Nationale, and easily locate the Monoprix (similar to London Drugs) and Orange (cell phone store). As a side note, the pay-as-you-go cell phone plans are shockingly cheap here... $20 for 30 days of unlimited calls and texts, plus 600 MB data; or just $30 for 30 days of unlimited calls and texts, plus 2GB of data!

Despite the modern conveniences, the downtown is architecturally quite beautiful, lined with historic buildings.  The city has been in existence since the 1100s, and became the capital of the region in 1540.  Most of this area dates back to Gallo-Roman times, and I look forward to visiting some of the ancient sites that are still standing.

We will need to take the rental car back soon, and unfortunately, there is no train that runs between Chamelet and Villefranche-sur-Saone, so we'll make our last run to the city this Saturday to get the last few things we have no prayer of getting locally (e.g. bathrobes! more electrical adapters! hand towels!)  If we need to do a similar shopping trip in the future, it will have to be via train to Lyon.  

Now that you have the basic lay of the land, I welcome you to join me on my adventures roaming the countryside, putting foot to earth !!!  :D