The Mâconnais
wine-producing country lies to the west of the valley of the Saône, a
strip hardly 20km wide, stretching from Mâcon to Tournus. The land
rises sharply into steep little hills and valleys, at its prettiest in
the south, where the region's best white wines come from, around the
villages of POUILLY , VINZELLES , PRISSÉ and FUISSÉ
, at the last of which, should you yearn for rustic rest, the Hôtel La
Vigne Blanche will provide just the setting you're looking for (tel
03.85.35.60.50, fax 03.85.35.67.13; €24-34; closed Dec 20-Jan 6), along
with good regional cooking in its restaurant (from €12.96).
Directly above these villages rises the distinctive and precipitous 500-metre rock of Solutré
, which in prehistoric times - around 20,000 BC - seems to have served
as some kind of ambush site for hunters after migrating animals: the
bones of 100,000 horses have been found in the soil beneath the rock,
along with mammoth, bison and reindeer carcasses. The history and
results of the excavations are displayed in a museum at the foot of the
rock, the Musée Départemental de Préhistoire
(daily except Tues: Feb-May & Oct-Nov 10am-noon & 2-5pm;
June-Sept 10am-1pm & 2-7pm; €3.05). A steep path climbs to the top
of the rock, where you get a superb view as far as Mont Blanc and the
Matterhorn on a clear day, as well as your immediate surroundings. You
look down on the huddled roofs of SOLUTRÉ-POUILLY
and the slopes beneath you covered with the vines of the Chardonnay
grape that makes the exquisite greenish Pouilly-Fuissé wine. It is at
its most enchanting in early spring when the earth still shows its
terre-cuite colours, punctuated by bursts of white cherry blossom and
the blue drift of bonfire smoke from prunings amid the neatly staked
rows of vines.
Aside
from the sheer pleasure of wandering about in such reposeful landscapes
- not so, however, if you are trying to tackle this very hilly country
on a bike - there are some specific places to make for. One such is the
sleepy hamlet of ST-POINT , where the poet Lamartine spent much of his life in the little medieval
Château de St-Point
, now a museum dedicated to his memory (March to mid-Nov Mon &
Thurs-Sat 10am-noon & 2-6pm, Sun 2-6pm; €3.51), next to the
Romanesque church where he is buried. If you continue up the road
behind the château you come to an utterly rural farm where you can buy
goat's cheese. There is a campsite by the Lac St-Point (tel 03.85.50.52.31; April-Oct).
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