10 oct

Five churches done, 248 to go. Oh no, yesterday we also saw three places, 245 to go. 254 Romanesque churches, that’s how many they have in le Departement de Saone et Loire, where we are staying and where we have in fact been staying from the time we moved to Autun. Which would also exclude the Romanesque churches we saw in that area, another three.
Yesterday at the Information de Touristme in Cluny I asked for a map of the area with Romanesque churches. I was overwhelmed by what I saw. I started to count the churches and ended up with 254, although Edward Mullins – the British TV historian from the eighties, and the author of brilliant books about Cluny as well as the Road to Santiago – says there are less than 250 in this area, which is only a part of the old Burgundy Duchy. This was only the Saone et Loire area, departement 71, which did not include the Cote d’Or, departement 21, and the Yonne area, departement 89 if I am right.
To my surprise, and also to my delight this area is just swamped with Romanesque churches. You can hardly move to a different village and it won’t have an 11th or 12th century church. And most of them are related, of course, to the almighty Cluny, just a few miles up the road. Even in our own Saint Point, birthplace of the poet Lamartine – never read a poem by him – has its own Romanesque, Clunian, church, which we will visit one of these days.
Today we had to go to a supermarket. Coffee, cat food, Chaumes cheese, those kind of things. I told Julie I knew the perfect way to the Auchan, holier than any holy place, in Macon. It included the Romanesque churches of Tramayes, Chasselas, Leynes, St. Verand, Chanes and Vinzelles. You count six churches, and I earlier said we saw five churches. That’s right, we missed the Leynes church, hope it wasn’t too impressive. Come to find out these Michelin 1:150.000 maps are nothing compared to the 1:25.000 maps I got used to in England. One day I will sing the praise again of the english footpaths and the brilliant maps where you have to swap to another one almost every hour you walk. Ah, well that is not true, but I have had days where I walked through more than two maps.
Not so here in France. These maps take you a few days to pass by foot. But that’s not the worst, not every road is mentioned. The D31 becomes the D54, without the map telling you it does, at least not clearly. And then, this area isn’t proud enough of its medieval history. Not every 11th or 12th century church is posted. That’s how we missed the Romanesque church in Leynes.
Come to find out this area is close to Julienas, our favourite wine in the Beaujolais area. Not because of taste, you fancy fools, but because it indicates, we believe, the place where Julie was born – even though we know it was somewhere in Nebraska.
And then, Julienas is not even in the Saone et Loire area, there are a whole lot of possible Romanesque sites that we will have to go and discover. Our first focus will be though on the Saone et Loire ones. But we will have to stay around here for at least another week.