"Just a couple of pedal pushers"

June 16th

I know it seems like all we do is ride our bikes, drink wine and eat (basically true) but occasionally we take a break at a local site to enrich our French experience.  Today we rode our bikes for about 51km from the village of Buffon to the Chateau at Ancy-le-Franc.  As we began we passed by the Grande Forge de Buffon and decided on our way back we would go in and take a look around.  On our journey along the canal we passed by several sandstone quarries which makes sense because so many buildings were made from sandstone. Once we arrived at Ancy-le-Franc we discovered that the Chateau wasn't open for tours so I just had to stick my phone through the fence to get a good photo.  Just up the street however there was a nice little cafe so we could at least have our afternoon cafe au lait.  Here's where things got interesting...Jay left his wallet in the car so we had no money or credit card with us to pay...oops!  We discussed our predicament with the staff and they said not to worry just come back by later.  Embarrassed by our situation we hurriedly climbed on our bikes to pedal back to the car.  About half way back it occurred to me that we could have used our ApplePay on our phones...duh?  We did return and gave them a nice tip and they were quite pleased.  All's well that ends well, I guess.

One of the quarries we passed by

View across the canal for our lunch stop

The above mentioned cafe au lait

Chateau Ancy-le-Franc

Since we had to drive back through Buffon we did stop at the Forge.  Beautiful grounds and buildings for production, storage and the grounds keeper.  George-Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon was asked by the King of France to study the treatment of iron ore in Burgundy.  His studies ultimately resulted in the construction of the forge in Buffon.  The forge was built between 1768 and 1772 and primarily produced farm equipment from iron.  A side note to Leclerc is that his only son was guillotined during the French Revolution in 1794...a sad ending to his legacy.

Entrance to the Forge

Waterpower generated in this building

We had great burgers for dinner at Le Monge.  Mine had an epoisse cheese sauce and Jay's had comte cheese.  We were so excited to tackle them with fork and knife as the French do that I forgot to take pictures.  I did snap a photo of our placemat with the famous mathematician Le Monge while we were waiting for our food to arrive. 😂