My Pedaling is Punctuated by the Sound of Birds

After breakfast at Marc Meneau, I borrowed a bike to go out and see the countryside. I pedaled around a bend and into the small village of St. Pere, where trucks carefully navigated the narrow streets and forced pedestrians up onto the sidewalk.

I rode over a bridge and out onto a slight upgrade, beside the river Cure. My pedaling at nine am was punctuated by birds, all around me I could hear their cries. In the distance cows lazily munched on grass up on the hillsides, and as I climbed a steeper hill a sweeping panorama of Burgundy unfolded before me. Ahead a farmer was
fixing his fence, his little white truck parked beside the road. We exchanged murmured ‘bonjours’ and I pedaled on, in this glorious countryside nothing could have been more wonderful.

I reached the top and came across sheep with tiny babies suckling, and as I shot their photos they ran away. I made my way down and then up another hill and found a sign for “Les Fontaines Salees,” the site of an ancient Roman thermal bath and salt
springs. Here were diagrams that showed the hot, tepid and cold baths, and the foundations of what were once beauty treatment rooms for women.

In the village there is a museum where the treasures from the site are on view. In one glass case were hundreds of Roman and later era coins retrieved from the bottom of the sacred fountain.

There were coins for Commodus, Augustus, and Hadrian, and for all of the emperors throughout the Roman eras, and then for kings, all cast in metal. It was a trip through ancient history seeing these coins all lined up for the different rulers, each tossed into the well for good luck.

Like on the road, the only sound here as I opened a door in the back of the small museum was the birds chirping, the only thing to see in the distance were rolling fields and trees with curious round bunches of leaves. Burgundy is a beautifully preserved part of the world–you can see why this is the world’s number place to visit, with more than 75 million visitors each year.