Penny and Barry`s Summer Holiday in France and

We have been holidaying at Penny`s brothers house in Digoin for the last two years, on an arrangement whereby I do some building work In return for Bed and Breakfast hospitality. The house, which is in the Loire Valley, is about 40 miles west of Macon, which of course is in the Rhone Valley. We travelled via Channel Tunnel and a 480 mile motorway drive via Reims and Challon-Sur-

Soane.

Roger has owned the house for the last 6years and is working on various renovation projects, which can only be done on their school holiday visits. Two years ago we installed new windows, last year we started on conversion of the “pigsty” which was adjacent to the existing very small bathroom. Work involved forming door openings and laying out pipe runs for new drainage. This year with bathroom appliances all set up and a new ceiling, it just remained to connect external drains to septic tank.

Having completed essential building works, Penny and I had booked a 4 day holiday in Brunnen on Lake . We had realised last year that the Swiss border was only 80 miles away with a further 250 miles in Switzerland to our Hotel. We checked our routes through AA mapping and found the Northerly Route through Bessancon on A36, offered a motorway link into Basel, then down to Lucerne, total distance 320 miles, taking us about 6 hours. No tolls to pay in Switzerland as long as you buy vignette sticker for the windscreen at £32, good value after the French motorway tolls. We found plenty of service areas on the way down.

We arrived at the Lakeside Statterhof Hotel in Brunnen, we had stayed in the Hotel 15 years ago and found things changed with more conferences going on including a musical event with students from Japan. The days of the package tour guests from UK seem to be over. On the first night we had Dinner at the Hotel, which was excellent served on the Lakeside Terrace. We were revisiting some attractions with the great advantage of having our own car with us. One tour which we wanted to undertake was the three passes, which takes in the Susten Pass, the and the Grimsel Pass. These are in the Mountains South of the Lake involving a fairly short drive via Altdorf. The 3 passes are all well over 7,000feet high. We had first taken this tour on a coach on a previous visit and could not envisage how this was safely driven even in a mini coa

We stopped at the Rhone Glacier on the Grimsel Pass, evidence of global warming seemed to show a major shrinking of the Glacier leaving the access tunnel much further down, the owners of this tourist attraction were now covering the ice to stop it melting any further in the Summer. We then ascended the Grimsel Pass heading for , where we stopped for drinks and ice cream, which became a normal afternoon event. We were fortunate to have clear dry weather for this trip and returned via the A2 motorway which took us via a long tunnel back to Altdorf. We elected to try the local town restaurant for Dinner, which was pleasant but prices for anything containing meat were very high. Fish, we found to be more reasonably price. We had taken to having G&T`s to counter the high temperatures, each evening and found they were costing around £11 each, but well worth it.

Hotel breakfasts were well provided giving the usual cereals and fruit juices, croissants and the option of Champagne, with fried eggs and bacon usually available. On our second full day we took the Lake Paddle Steamer to Lucerne, a very pleasant trip of 2 hours each way, criss-crossing the Lake to various Towns en route. We saw the rack railway from Vitznau which climbs up the Rigi Mountain to a height of over 5,000 feet, from which the Jungfrau and the Eiger can be seen. We reached Lucerne in time for lunch, which was taken at a pleasant riverside cafe.

The Historic Bridge across the River still shows the scars from a devastating fire.The wooden structure has been rebuilt but the Medieval painted panels in the roof had been destroyed in the central section. Thankfully many have survived. Taking a leisurely trip back to Brunnen on what had been a beautiful sunny, day rekindling many

happy memories of our previous holidays here.

On the following day we elected to visit Einsiedeln about 20 miles away, which contains a large Benedictine Abbey, founded originally in 800 AD. The Monastery became very rich and powerful during the Middle Ages, involving pilgrimages to see the famous Black Madonna and Child. The effigy`s are clothed in magnificent embroidered robes, it is thought that the effigies were not originally black but had acquired that colour due to incense and candles being burnt near-by over many years. The Abbey, which is in the Baroque Style,is sumptuously

decorated,and still receives thousands of pilgrims each year.

This area of Switzerland is the cradle of the original Cantons, from which Switzerland was formed. The local Town Schwyz, formed its name, the legend of William Tell apparently started in Altdorf where the rich Austrian Baron, Gessler, (his descendants now run the town`s petrol station!), was attempting to take over the Canton. The legend of William Tell shooting an apple from his son`s head, is probably folk lore, but there is a big statue depicting the event in the Town Centre.

The following day it was time for us to depart back to France, this time we elected to use the Southerly Route through and down to Geneva leaving a short crossing through France back to Macon and Digoin, again a 320 mile journey. We found travelling on motorways in France easy with quiet roads and good signage, the toll cost of travelling from Calais down to Digoin was about £40 each way. Fuel costs were from 1.40 Euros to 1.80 per litre. Currency in both Countries roughly on a par with the pound, no conversion needed. We did quite a lot of food shopping in France with our family and found costs to be very similar to UK, Wine is definitely cheaper! The local Digoin restaurant did three courses for 13 Euros, wine this year is now charged extra at 3 Euros per person! The local town was holding its annual snail festival, which is a local delicacy, with some 80,000 being consumed, apparently mainly imported from Canada, we resisted the temptation to try the delicacy. We visited an interesting exhibition in Genelard, showing the resistance to the Nazis in this area of Vichy France, readers will probably know that South of the Vichy Line the French were only controlled by local French Puppet Governors, North of Digoin to the Channl Coast there was very strict German control by troops, we were shown a plaque in Digoin where 20 French Resistance fighters were shot.

Works around the house during our last few days involved the setting up of a large water storage tank, re- fixing a large barn door so that it could be opened and measuring up for stair repairs, which may become next years task. We ended our stay in Digoin with a celebration meal with our hosts and completed planning for departure next day, leaving at 9.00am for a 6.30pm crossing by train. It was a 7 hour drive of 480 miles, indicating high average speed. We were able to book an earlier train and with the time difference were looking for a drive home by 7.00pm, but all plans were thrown into disarray by the closure of M20! the main connecting road to the tunnel, leaving us a tortuous trip up the A2 to get back to the M25.

During the trip we drove a total of 2286 miles and giving us confidence in planning another Continental Trip

on our own, perhaps Northern Italy next time!