A fond farewell via Whitby & Burgundy, a fitting au revoir Jon & Kylie

The time comes when friends have to leave on their own adventures.

We are sad and excited for Kylie and Jon as they head off to Adelaide for their next chapter.  We have only known each other for about 18 months and strong bonds form easily with nice people, Jon tells us frequently he is nice. 

The parting is eased by the knowledge that 1. our livers may now have a chance to recover and, 2. in the short time together we have discovered wide beams are better than narrow, no meal can proceed without a bridging wine, every dish deserves a stand, cigars can be quite nice, canasta and zilch are not games of skill, and owning a chateau in France is an exciting dream.  Quite a bit to be thankful for. So it is with mixed emotions this epic entry records in a thousand memories our last days together for a while.

Having ended their rental of the Didsbury cocktail Cave they came to stay for a few days before a France Germany and Switzerland trip.  The series of shots that follow are of our days to Whitby, Staithes and Knaresbrough/Leeds  then of the time we shared for a couple of days in France, l'Bourgogne, or Burgundy if like Gail and I you have zero french.

Well we did have some good times as usual and as usual they often made us forget to take photos but we did manage to capture some bits, over 200 bits actually but I won't put them all here

 A stop on the way to Whitby to look over Sutton Bank and watch some gliders take off

 A lunch at Trenchers seafood on the Whitby main drag

Followed by a low tide tour of the town

 And on to Staithes for a beer and a look around before heading home

 Next day to do Leeds via Knaresbrough, look around Knaresbrough and lunch in Leeds.

A look at the Garden Gate pub with it's protected 1900's tiles and decor.

And a lunch in Leeds Malmaison hotel with good food and great service.

I will gloss over the long and lubricated card/dice nights between these events by saying all too soon our house was empty again, Gail went to work and a few days later we headed off to join up again in Paris.

We left from Leeds Bradford airport where the british cuisine promotions gave us glee that we were going to enjoy better things.








And better things we did.  Meeting up again at CGD Terminal 2 car hire on Saturday we loaded up our Peugeot 207 waggon and headed off to our Burgundy gite.
Via Auxere for a lunch at the only open meal house, a LaTour for an acceptable meal and a welcome 1664 .  We shopped in the supermarket, observed a series of marriage celebrations with cars hooting through the streets, a huge and noisy invasion of motorbikes all reving engines and blowing horns, a few hundred at least which we were unable to determine if they were part of a bikers wedding, we also watched some acrobatics from the local school and walked this pretty place finally ending up having a drink by the river.

But we had to move on and we were keen to see our accommodation as it was a stressful exercise to locate it on short notice.  The one Jon had booked through a UK agent was cancelled three days earlier and Jon located this one through a French site, Thankfully Jon's French was also to ensure we enjoyed our time in a very un english speaking region and to a level we could never have achieved on our own.  

The gite was in the middle of nowhere in a village of day bathers or so the village name JOURS Les BAIGNEUX implies, as do the village baths a photo of which is included later.  Here I copy some of the shots we took of the accommodation.  We were about 50 minutes from Dijon, and hour and some from the wineries, two hours south of Paris and really in the centre of silence I'll let the photos tell you more;

And the village around the gite was equally special, we really really lucked out and the place was so much like home we just loved it.  I immediately wanted to learn French.  

The views from our door

The chateau we want to buy and run gites from.

The local baths

our landlord's home.

Furry animal shots

Called this bloke Oaty as in donkey oaty

I called her Jenny but her real name was much prettier and means Star.

The bus stop #50.

Catholic church dating in parts to the 1600's

Four a Pain is oven of bread. Still used for village festivals etc. and dating back 400 yrs.

But enough of our gite and village.  We also went to Dijon, Beaune, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault and other Pinot growing regions.  We also stopped into a lovely little valley town called Saint-Seine-LÁbbaye for a lunch in a modern hotel and a walk through the town

have a look at these,

And of course there were city walks in Dijon where there was some sort of cycle fest happening.

where we had lunch

this bloke was called Francois Rude.

So that was Dijon, Another day we did Bourne, heart of the Bourgogne wine region.

And then off to the vineyards for lunch and tastings, again without Jon we could never have done so.

The vinters are in villages on the hillsides and have cellars (caves) under their homes so you have to knock on their doors and ask for tastings.  Most wonderful. We drove through the Grand cru areas  and learnt how constrained the appellation rules are and why French wines are subject to such varying qualities, from field to field, and from village to village.  They must pick fruit 100 days from flowering for example, no sugar testing just a day count. They are also restricted how much they can harvest so small bunches are okay.  So many differences from Hunter Valley wine making.  We started in Pommard , lunch and two tastings.

Then on to Meursault and nearby villages for some serious wine tasting. 

yeah, 1945, 1929...Volnays... The mould is like the mould on cheese but much older. Caves are all underground and really really interesting.

And that's enough for now.  I am amazed you made it through, almost as amazed we did!  I am equally amazed this was in reality a 3 day break.... I'm stunned how much good time we fitted in to that short visit.  We are loving our trips to France and I am looking at Language courses. Wonder if my romance will result in action.