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[We publish in this column articles and notes which may help our readers in their plans for travel al home and abroad. They will be written by correspondents who have visited the places described.]
Burgundy
rER17Aps just because it is comparatively little frequented by English travellers Burgundy is the best of all places in France for a short holiday. So little time need go to waste in mere
railway. For my own part, I leave London when it is nearly time to go to bed, take the ten-thirty at St. Pancras, sleep for six hours on the boat from Tilbury to Dunkirk, and breakfast on a train which takes me down past Hazebrouk, Loos, Lens, and Arras—slap through the battlefields. One has nearly bur hours in Paris before taking the two o'clock, which reaches Dijon in excellent time for one to dine at the very heart of Burgundy.
The Trois Faisans is not only one of the half-dozen best restaurants in France (and like them all, it is not cosmo- politan, but depends on local custom and has local character). It is also in a beautiful old house with that mellow murrey- coloured tiling which expresses the rich charm of Burgundy almost as well as the wine. And it stands on the Place d'Armes opposite what used to be the Palace of the Dukes, so that the dullest cannot fail to perceive that this was the capital of a real sovereignty. Dijon is like Oxford, more proper for a week's visit ; but if you have only hours instead of days, you cannot miss the front of Notre Dame la Grande with the long row of grotesque carvings over one of the great porches that are typical of Burgundian buildings (lepers used to stay there and hear Mass through open doors), and you should stop to see Jacquemart working the clock which a Duke of Burgundy carried off. from Flanders, and set up rather incongruously here. The Flemish boor with his wife and children, who among them beat out the hours there by a mechanism 400 years old is not really worthy of the stone-work. But the Burgundian potentates were always bringing in Flemings to do what Burgundian craftsmen could do with more dignity.
Behind Notre Dame is a maze of old streets full of old and exquisite houses. The Hotel des Cloches is famous, but for such as find it expensive I recommend the Chapeau Rouge— and its grand ordinaire blanc. South from Dijon the Cote d'Or runs for forty miles fronting the plain through which the SaOne flows, and a string of villages from Chambertin and Vougeat to Pommard, Volnay and Meursault, nestle at the foot of that sunny, vine-clad slope, and each is harmonious and exquisite as its wine. Meursault is perhaps the loveliest, but I am more attached to Santenay, southernmost of all ; and the road along the coteau between these places, looking across the plain to the Jura Mountains, is one of the finest in France.
At the centre of the COte is Beaune, with its wonderful Hospice, built in the fifteenth century, and still managed by the same order of nuns who wear that quaint and amazing costume. It is endowed chiefly with wine—the produce of the vineyards that have been left to it. When you drink Hospices de Beaune, you can know that you are drinking as good wine as is in the world, and that you are supporting a beautiful charity. Further south along the SaOne Valley are Tournus, with its amazing church (or rather three churches superimposed) Mean, and Cluny, where are the remains of what was a rival to St. Peter's when Cluny was a rival to Rome.
But there is the very different Burgundy on the other watershed. All streams at Dijon flow to the Mediterranean ; but until you are within half an hour of Dijon you are fol- lowing up a watercourse, every trickle of which must go out past Paris, and so to le Havre and the Channel. The actual watershed is close to the junction of Les Laumes, which is also Alesia. where Caesar conquered Vercingetorix. From the train you can see the colossal statue of the Gaulish hero, set up by Napoleon HI. on top of the scarped hill south of the railway.
From Les Laumes a local train will take you to Seinur, loveliest of all the little old walled towns in this country ; and from Semur again to Avallon, which is bigger but hardly less beautiful, and a better centre to stay at. For here the rivers have cut deep gorges, and buzzards wheel over ravines that might belong to Switzerland, and you can fish for trout in swift tumbling waters. Also within easy excursion is Vezelay, where St. Bernard preached the Crusade with St. Louis beside him—a town incredibly unchanged, though it holds hundreds now where once were thousands, and its great and beautiful twelfth century church stands, empty in all but a corner. Then there is Auxerre on your way back to the main line • and the cathedral' at Auxerre' stands almost as well as Salisbury, rising glorious froth above the beautiful Yonne. Or again, in the other direction from Avallon is the little town of Saulieu, with a hotel famous through France—a stage on the motor road to Lyons and the South. Not cheap,
of course ; but it is an education to eat there. And if you go to Burgundy without taking interest in what you eat and drink you will lack understanding, and will not be understood by the stalwart folk of that singularly well-nourished and [We shall be glad to answer queries arising out of the Travel articles published in our columns. Inquiries should be addressed to the Travel Manager, The SPECTATOR, 99 Gower Street, W.C.1.—Ed. SPECTATOR.]
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