29th of July – we were supposed to leave the room early because the area where the hotel was located was supposed to have an electricity cut at 8:45 am. But I was still very slow due to me finishing the blog by midnight and calling my dad for his birthday.
Thinking we gained some time by being packed early we used it to even pump up our tires as the hotel had a service station for bikers. Doing so we got to know two sisters on their bikes who got also prepared for their tour. They had been on the traces of their family. Their father was a farmer who was forced to leave and now decades later they had discovered the building in ruin but could still save two signs made with the handwriting of their father.
Another half hour later we were finally got to the cathedral. Robert had a haircut while I was taking photos of the UNESCO world heritage site. From the last days we had learned that we were getting into more and more abandoned areas where we had no chance to find anything to eat. So today we got better prepared by buying us some sandwiches. Finally, at 11:30 am we were able to leave Charite-sur-Loire over the bridge which must have been travelled over by so many people over the last centuries.
The landscape on the other side of the river changed completely. Huge fields were vast stretching to the horizon and farmhouses in ruin gave more and more the impression we were in the most abandoned corner of France. We had to zick-zack as bikers on small roads around the longest National Route of France built in one line like they have them in the US. Not very tempting to bike through the US. At least we knew we had our sandwiches fixed to the side of our bags.
In one of these villages I discovered from the corner of my eye something built in bales of straw. I immediately turned around and had a look. It was a house still under construction, and the owner lived in a little cabin of 16 square metres just beside. He opened the door and asked if we knew each other, and I explained to him that that would be impossible as we biked all the way from Bavaria in front of his door. I explained him the idea of our tour-project and Jean-Francois Feigna who builds sustainable buildings since twenty years was willing to give us some insight into his way of construction. He showed us how he had used a nearly 1,5m long needle to sew the bales to be able to cut angles into the rectangular shapes to gain light inside the thick walls. The difference to the straw house we had seen in Dornbirn was the fact that the French authorities didn’t allow the straw bales as a structural material. Therefore, he had to add a wood construction.
Continuing our way towards Bourges something else had caught my attention from the corner of my eye. It was in the village of Franchville the renovation of an old chapel of the Templar being located along the way of Saint James. They had just opened in June and were preparing an exhibition about the knights of the Templar. Before it was in a very bad condition and even the west wall had collapsed when they started with the renovation. The lady who was involved with all the organization explained us a lot about the history of the place and we were happy to have a break in the loggia of the entrance to finally enjoy our sandwiches.
Bourges was not so far away anymore and we could see the cathedral already from far distance, but after being in lonesome country side for such a long time it was suddenly a shock to find ourselves fighting traffic and being lost without bike lanes in the industrial zone of Bourges packed between trucks and cars. It was maybe not the welcoming side of this town to access on two wheels but getting closer to the centre the fascinating silhouette of the cathedral dominated to horizon.
We entered the city centre from the extension of the town hall, which I immediately recognized as a building of Claude Vasconi where I had worked in Paris in 1996/97. When I got our stamps at the reception I asked the lady if she knew the architect of this building but she had no idea who it was. Well the answer was given by Aunty Google.
In front of the cathedral we took a photo with the Saint James shell in the pavement and sent it to our Rotarian friend Jean-Jacques Kisleg who I mistakenly called Saint-Jacques. He told us not to move because he would pick us up by bike immediately. I took my time time until his arrival to have a look at the cathedral and as it was built by a cousin of the builder of the Notre Dame in Paris it was one of the most astonishing spaces reaching into the sky. I never felt so much uplift created by stone appearing as naturally its height like trees are growing into sky.
We repeated the same group photo with Jean-Jacques in front of the cathedral and started a city tour by bike together. The only difference was that his bike wasn’t as heavy as ours and he moved within town on his bike as quickly as Jacques Tati in his movie “Jour de Fête” trying to be as fast as the American post. I hardly could catch up with him, especially because a splendour of beauty opened in front of us rolling through the medieval parts of town getting through parks and along palaces, and I had hardly any time to take pictures. It was all flying by my eyes and I tried to absorb all the impressions while I tried to control my heavily charged bike. It made me realize how much patience it demanded from Robert losing me again and again taking pictures. Would I even have started to film instead of taking photos we would have never got that far on this trip!
We stopped at an ancient monastery where the buildings had been turned into a restaurant and hotel to have a drink outside waiting for Jean-Claude Ducray who was the former district Governor. He had organized the key to the apartment of the past president of Bourges Chantal Danjon who invited us to stay overnight at her place as she had left for holidays. It happened to be in a building just beside the famous palace of Jacques Coeur, who was once during the 15th century richer than the King of France Charles VII. He and his wife are still watching outside the windows as statues from the palace. But King Charles VII put him into prison because he was way too powerful. Jacques Coeur could escape to Italy and never returned.
We decided to have dinner in a Chinese restaurant which was run that evening by the owner herself without any help. But she managed perfectly. We had intense interesting conversation and after a long day this wasn’t meant to be the end of it. As it happened to be the case that a bottle of wine from Reuilly was standing on our neighbours table, I was just curious to have a look at it because I had lived in the Rue de Reuilly in Paris. The two gentlemen from the neighbouring table were inviting us for joining them for another bottle of Reuilly wine. So we changed from one table to the next after we had said good-bye to Jean-Jacques et Jean-Claude getting spontaneously to know Eric et Nicolas.
Eric is musician and Nicolas serves in the army. We were diving into long philosophical discussions accompanied by the bottle of Reuilly Rosé and I captured the moment even on video as it was so intense. At the end Eric made us listen to his first album “Le tout premier jour du Printemps” in his car before we finished the “Bourges-by-night-tour” after midnight in an Irish Pub. What a rich long non-stop day!
