30 Jun Macon
The weather oracle app announced a heavy thunderstorm in the afternoon. Nevertheless, we did not want to stay in this place. Johanna would prefer to sit out the thunder, lightning and rain in a solid dwelling, but there was none here. So we made the 18 km walk to Macon, a slightly larger town.
About half an hour before arriving at the campground, the sun finished its barbecue, gradually hiding behind the thick, black clouds that were coming up. Despite the clouds, we were already daunted by the entrance to the campground, a very wide, paved, 4-lane road with barriers and directional arrows. At the front desk, for some reason, there was a sign in English that said “No water here!” When the answer to my question about any permanent accommodation was negative, even I was a little happy. But stepping out of the reception, I sensed we were about to have a problem. The wind picked up speed, it became visibly darker and colder. Before I even got to the campground reception, I quickly booked a hotel nearby, via booking.com. We quickly headed towards the hotel, but we didn’t get far because it started to drizzle. We decided to sit out the first rain shower at the McDonalds ahead. We put our trolleys under a canopy, entered the branch, and the action was already going on outside. It was a matter of seconds, because seconds would have been enough in this rain to soak us to the bone.
We used the time at “Maces” and treated ourselves to a few treats beyond baguettes with cheese. After the coffee-cookie round, the rain refilled its buckets and we used this time to get to the hotel. At the hotel we were welcomed by a very friendly gentleman who even gave us, on request, a room on the first floor. The room was clean and big enough that we could easily drive in with the carts.
We treated ourselves to 4 nights, 3 full days, because there were a few things that needed to be taken care of.
On the one hand, Johanna’s foot claimed some rest, the city wanted to be visited and the written blog posts pictured and uploaded. Furthermore, a strategic planning of the further journey was on the agenda. Because with Johanna’s great decision to come all the way to the Mediterranean, the question arose: Can this be done in the time she has left?
Johanna’s foot got its rest the very first day while I explored Macon.
Macon, yes what can I say? After Chalon and Tournus, Macon had a hard time getting a place in the enchantment Olympus. The houses in Macon also had old facades and there were also many alleys. But everything was a bit bigger, there were a lot of construction sites and also some more modern buildings in between, so for me this charming charm didn’t come up. Of course, the huge cathedral and individual other buildings were impressive, but here it had faded out.
On the second day, Johanna joined us on the city tour and gained a similar impression of Macon. The same evening I worked until early 3:00 am on the blog and was then, that first time up do date.
On the third day (so today =D) was planned. The first thing we had to do was to find out how many more days we needed to reach the sea. Until Avignon I had already made a table, because that was the previous goal of Johanna.
Now Johanna’s suggestion was, “Let’s walk to Avignon and from there go to the sea by train. Then we’ll return to Avignon, I’ll take the train home, and you can walk to the sea.”
That sounded good at first, but felt totally wrong to me. Because I really wanted to reach the sea continuously, to get closer to it. And that would be like if we were watching a movie and someone said, “Let’s watch the end right now, you can watch it again from the beginning later.” So the logical conclusion was, we take the train a few stops before. On the road ahead came Lyon, a big city. We agreed right away that we didn’t want to go to the big city. Because walking for days with our wagons through the suburbs and then through the city itself is not really fun. So the idea matured that we would take the train from Macon to a few stops in Lyon.
Difficult is the planning from Avignon, because we follow until there created bike paths. From Avignon to Marseille, unfortunately, there is no bike path, besides, I want to take a little detour to look at the highly praised Aix en Provence.
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