Barge Date:  08-08-2021

Where Have The Days Gone?

Where are we?  What have we been doing?  Going to look at the pictures to figure this out.

Stopped in Montbard, home of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, the father of all thoughts on natural history in the second half of the 18th century.  He wrote 36 volumes on this and was one of the first to think about evolving life.  But he was also a mathematician, astronomer and had many other interests. He probably did not have enough time in each day to do what he wanted to do. He should be someone that is mentioned in the history of science. He had a colleague that did a lot of drawings of animals and would be Europe's Audubon. At one point he purchased a nearby town and named it Buffon.

Many of the following pictures are of a park called Parc Buffon in Montbard.

On to Ancy-le-Franc. Big chateau here. A number of owners over time. See one of the gardens from Google Earth. The fancy garden can only be best seen from above rather than walking around it.

Room after room of interesting styles, floors, ceilings, woodworking and art work of various sorts. Take a look. Or skip if bored. But you will miss the exhibition of Lego Star Wars works that were on display in some of the rooms. Remember, if you click on a picture you can have a slide show of all pictures.

 

The gardens were interesting to walk through. Not much to the town but had a nice meal up the rue from the chateau.

And if one chateau is not enough the next village of Tanlay had its version of a get away place. The village was interesting for its upkeep. Road, sidewalks, building, etc. all seemed to be well taken care of. Often you walk a village and you wonder why the outside of homes and other buildings are not "fresh looking". Tanlay looked gentrified. So you will see more pictures of the town plus the chateau. A note on the Chateau: most of the walls were painted so not a lot of hung art.

This little work of iron is placed so no one can jump or climb from the wall to the bridge to get around the large metal gate.  Everything rotates so no good hold.

 

A production of Cyrano de Bergerac was going to be played at night.

YouTube is not playing nice and will not let me put this video up in a normal manner. Click the link to see it.   The video is of a ceiling in the chateau that tells a story about the conflicts between Catholic and Protestants. Why the people are mostly naked I don't know why. The Catholics are depicted as warriors and the Protestants as peaceful. The faces were known to be of  persons in history. The mural was hidden in the chateau for years until discovered in the 19th century.

Have started to see some traffic on the water. Hire boats, some cruisers and some barges. Gets you excited to have to pass some traffic coming at you.

Working our way north and will soon get to visit with some family members.  That will happen on August 9 in Saint-Florentin. So we are taking some small legs of the Bourgogne odyssey. The last town we were in is Tonnerre. 

No castles here. But two very interesting sites. The first is the laundry.  We have seen this in other towns and have posted pictures. Normally the water is taken from a stream that is diverted though the laundry. In Tonnerre the water is from an underground spring such as you see a lot in Florida. Very clean.  It has some depth but very little opportunity to explore under water. So take a look.

Water from the large pool would be diverted along a washing channel under the overhang.

 

The second site is called Hotel Dieu.  It was built in the 12th century as a hospital/church. Huge. You might come here to die close to God.

This structure was the work of Marguerite de Bourgogne, Countess of Tonnerre, queen of Sicily and Jerusalem and widow of the king of several properties. It was constructed in two years, 1293-1295. She became a servant of the poor. Important people and commoners are buried under the floor. 

The building was used mostly as a religious site and hospital but notably also as a warehouse by the Americans during WWI  and bombed by the Americans during WWII. This bombing destroyed part of the building. The roof is the original put on in the 12th century (less the bombed part).  Try to get that guarantee for your next roof. The pictures may not show it well but this roof is very steep.

 

This gnomon was added to the floor some time after construction.  It gives indication of astronomic time.

 

 So this is an off day.  I get to do the blog.