Chateâux, Vineyards and Gastronomy in Bordeaux
Sunday 28 May – A quick breakfast in the Marché de San Quentin and we were off to Gare Austerlitz for our TGV to Gare Bordeaux-St Jean, the Train à Grande.
Vitesse lived up to its name, reaching a speed of over 285kms per hour, and we arrived in just over 2 ½ hours. Not long after we were checking into Hotel de Sèze, a delightful, typically French hotel, inspired by the 18th century, and wonderfully located in the heart of Bordeaux. All settled in, we headed off to Mama Shelter, a Phillipe Starck designed rooftop bar for a cocktail to start off the evening on the right track. Next up we walked around the immediate area and found a beautiful square, full of cafés and restaurants and joined the crowds to grab a quick bite before heading back for a good night’s rest prior to a busy day tomorrow.
Monday 29 May – Whit Monday and a public holiday in France – one of four in May and painful as a huge amount of businesses close. We were keen to rent some bicycles – and on a warm, sunny public holiday you’d have thought that this would be the ideal day to do some really good trading, but no, after all this is France, the land of short working weeks and current strikes protesting the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64 years! We had visited the Tourist Office and got maps, brochures and pages-full of bicycle rental shops and whilst we enjoyed a coffee and a pain aux raisins, I started ringing them to try and secure a couple of bikes. All I got was answerphone messages telling me they were closed, or no response at all! Finally I found one that was open and off we went on the tram to the other end of town to do the deal.
Two bikes secured and a cycle map in hand, we headed out down to the cycle paths running alongside the Garonne River. Our first impressions were very underwhelming. Bordeaux is the fifth most populated city in France, and is a tourist destination for its architectural and cultural heritage with more than 350 historic monuments. It is also a central and strategic hub for the aeronautics, military and space sector. Of course the big crowd puller is the fact that it is a world capital of wine with many castles and vineyards on the hillside of the Gironde region, and a centre of gastronomy, two of the main reasons for our visit. However, I must say we found all the buildings to be imposing, but very much lacking in warmth – it seems like the whole city has been built at once, with all the buildings the same dirty beige colour and similar design, and pretty much all the same height and lacking any other colour – even though it is late Spring, and there are a green trees around, there are hardly any flowers or much greenery about at all, making it seem quite dour.
We cycled past the Place de la Bourse, originally the Place Royal, which was the first open square in Europe and is bordered by two symmetrical pavilions, the Stock Exchange and the Customs House. Next was La Cité du Vin, a unique cultural facility, designed by Anouk Legendre and Nicolas Desmazieres, it’s a space shaped by symbols of identity, gnarled vine stock, wine swirling in a glass and eddies on the Garonne and dedicated to wine as a cultural, universal and living heritage (and actually looks rather strange amongst the historic buildings in the city). Stopping for lunch along the riverside we began to plan our afternoon’s cycling trip.
There are cycle trails all around Bordeaux and we had been advised by the tourist office that a visit to Château Smith Haut Lafitte, in the Graves region south of Bordeaux was a must. So off we went. Disappointingly, for the most part, the trail was through boring suburbia, I was also having a bit of trouble with my bike, although electric, it was very big and very heavy, and because I am also short, I was struggling with it, especially when I had to stop as I was on tiptoes even with the saddle at its lowest. We cycled for about two hours and it was hard work, but we finally found the turn off and were rewarded with the most stunning vineyards and “land of wines and art”, incredible sculptures dotted around the landscape. Surrounded by forests, hedges and hives, covered with Gravels – Graves Gunziennes – the vines of Smith Haut Lafitte are dug at more than 6 metres deep and the grapes benefit from the stones’ mirror effect from the sun for perfect ripening. The whites are subtly smoked and the reds are smooth and complex and the soil is ploughed using horse-drawn carts to protect the white wine vineyard’s fragile slopes.
Les Sources de Caudalie, the Hotel which is part of the estate, boasts a 2-Michelin star restaurant, La Grand’Vigne and an incredible Vinothérapie Spa – this was created by Mathilde Thomas, the daughter of the owners of the estate and together with her husband they realised the powerful antioxidants that are contained in grape seeds and worked with a professor from the Pharmacy University of Bordeaux, to develop the luxury natural skincare brand, Caudalie.
The Vinothérapie Spa allows you to experience this unique brand and enjoy specialist treatments performed by Vinotherapists. To be fair, if we had had time to spare, I would love to have indulged in a massage – because by the time we got there my a**e was so sore with the hard leather saddle, I could hardly walk when I got off the bike!!!
Next stop was to honour our dinner reservation at Château Léognan’s restaurant, Le Manege. Another 30-minute cycle and this time, because Geoff had plugged in the GPS with a bike, not a car symbol, we ended up on a forest track, full of loamy soil (great for the grapes, but not so great to cycle through), so deep in parts the tyres kept getting stuck. This is where I had my first fall of the day from the bike – yes, sadly more than one, - strike one, nice bruise to the back of my calf from the heavy bike! Finally we arrived, 30 minutes before the restaurant opened, so it was nice to sit and relax in the gardens with a drink (and have a quick wash and brush-up in their bathroom – to say I felt grubby and underdressed for dinner was putting it mildly!). We had a delicious dinner with a couple of matching wines for Geoff and only a small one for me, being mindful of a very long cycle home.
By 8.15pm we felt we needed to head off before it was dark (around 9.30pm here now). Off we went, but it was hard going, the electrics on my (large) bike were not kicking in properly and I was having to pedal hard to keep up with Geoff, not only that, to avoid loamy forest trails, Geoff plugged in a car route, which was great until it tried to take us on the motorway! The sky darkened and there were a few lightning strikes but luckily only a few heavy drops of rain. By the time we had reached the outskirts of Bordeaux it was almost dark and we had no lights on the bikes. We kept to the main streets but it was difficult, you had to avoid getting the bike tyres caught in the tram tracks and there were plenty of traffic lights, cars, buses and pedestrians around. My next fall was when I was busy turning around to see if Geoff was still behind me and I came to a skidding halt by the kerb but couldn’t reach the ground so toppled over with the heavy bike on top of me, - strike two, grazed knee and elbow this time! Onwards and upwards, Geoff now in front, we cycled down the longest shopping street in Europe, rue St-Catherine, with its shiny surface and slight kerbs either side and now filled with pedestrians and other cyclists, with me weaving in and out, I didn’t take a kerb properly and went flying again, bloody bike on top of my shin this time, - strike three! About ten pedestrians came rushing over to kindly help me up and feeling very sorry for myself with a throbbing golf-ball sized lump on my shin, got back on the bike and tearfully, but carefully, cycled back to the hotel.
What a day!!! Full of adventure, sightseeing, wine and food, plenty of exercise on the bikes, plenty of injuries for me, we certainly put in some kilometres and by the time we staggered back into the hotel, the sorest bums and tailbones you can imagine, we couldn’t wait to get into the shower and collapse into bed – me swathed in a layer of Voltaren gel and thankful that I wasn’t actually spending the night in hospital with a broken bone or two!
Tuesday, 30 May – we couldn’t get the extra night at Hotel de Sèze for tonight so had to jump on booking.com to find something else. Now esconced in a small apartment at the other end of town, I am writing up this blog listening to all the action outside. Plenty of sirens, plenty of music and a lot of people out and about an obviously not too stressed about tomorrow being a working day.
We transferred over to this place and then had to double back to the first hotel to retrieve the bikes – didn’t seem like a good idea to be riding and pulling along two suitcases and two carry-on wheelie bags at the same time! We did a little bit more sightseeing along the river and had a couple of stops for refreshments and then made our way down to drop the bicycles back at 6pm. Walking back to our new abode we stopped for a drink enroute and in the end decided it was far too much to bother going back to change and go out again, so had some tasty tapas and headed back here.
It’s still noisy and I think I have now had enough of being in a big city. We are off to St Emilion tomorrow and have booked what looks like a lovely little place to stay, and the good news is, it has a swimming pool so that will be well received!