Vive La France!! Vive les Meufs de Chamelet!

Today we learn that Pluto has been directly photographed from the closest distance ever: around 500,000 miles away.  What a gift--Happy Bastille Day France!!  :D

We've seen various signs on the highway telling us: "Chamelet Journée de Guinguette 14 Juin," so we know something is happening in Chamelet July 14 for Bastille Day.  Looking up "Guinguette" in the dictionary does not help shed light on the matter, so we decide that our randonnée should centre around checking out whatever it is that is going on. We drive the camionnette down to the déchetterie near the Pressoir to drop off our recycling, then walk up to Les Halles to see what is happening.  

The Halles are decked out in red, white, and blue banners, and little flags wave merrily over the entire square.  Some villagers are wearing little straw boaters.  Everyone really seems in the spirit of the event. There are a few stalls selling beer and wine, and in the Halles, people are eating full meals.  A musical trio is playing, so we sit in front of Stéphane-the-winemaker's house and watch the festivities.  The street is filled with confetti, which I assume is left over from the parade we missed by sleeping in today. 

A small group of middle-aged ladies are standing around near the stage chatting, and one begins to dance... well, I don't know if this is a Chamelet flash mob, or whether dancing is just contagious, but soon all the ladies in the group are doing the same line dance, and others run up to join in.  They all seem to know the steps.  Afterwards, one starts pumping her hands in the air and cheering, "Vive les meufs de Chamelet!  Vive les meufs de Chamelet!"  It takes me a second to realize she isn't saying "MILFs."  By then, she has passed me and sat down.

Word of the Day: Meuf

(mœf  )  (informal)

Translations

masculine noun

1. 1. (= femme) woman, bird (Brit, inf), chick (US, inf)
   2. (= petite amie) woman

A little farther down Rue de la Republique, there is an area for facepainting and traditional games.  Both of these booths seem popular with the kids.  Everything seems so successful.  I'm surprised to find out that this is the very first year Chamelet has held this festivity!  Not bad!

On the spur of the moment, we decide to walk towards the Chateau Chalosset for our randonnée.  Afterwards, we can loop back to Chamelet, in hopes of catching the second half of the festivities down by the Pressoir.  It is a 6.5 km randonnée. 

We head out away from Les Halles along Highway D157E, passing the school.  Then we take the right fork on the edge of town, which is Chemin du Plat Fournier, a one-lane road running parallel to the highway, a little farther up the side of the hill.  This path passes a couple of stray houses, one of which has a fabulous petunia garden.  I've never seen such dark velvety petunias!!  (I know that sounds like a joke, but it's not!)  Ahead of us on the left, we can see the blue spires of the Chateau de Chalosset tucked into the base of a forested hill -- behind us, we get a great view of Chamelet and the valley.

We walk along Chemin du Plat Fournier to a fork with a yellow randonnee sign.  Last time, we took the left fork to go to the castle.  This time, we take the right fork towards La Branle. The pavement ends almost immediately, and we find ourselves on a dirt road... it's actually little more than a set of tire tracks.      

We reach a small vineyard, and take the left fork past it into the forest.  There are several randonnée flags painted on the trees to guide us.

Arriving at a small clearing, we can see the path ahead of us running along the mountain to our right. We continue onward.  The path along this route is really wonderful, unlike any other we've done.  Beneath our feet, the dry cut grass is like a lush carpet.  We imagine that if we had walked this path in May, i.e. before the heatwave, the green grasses would have been up to our armpits.   

Next, we have a choice of paths: the left would take us directly back to the highway, the right would take us a little farther along in the forest.  We choose the right fork to follow the path we saw from the clearing.  According to the map, there is another chance to get back to the highway a little farther on.

We find it sooner than we'd like.  The left fork will take us down to the highway, but it certainly is a bit rougher than the right fork. The grasses here are not nicely trimmed, confirming our perception that these paths might not be passable earlier in the season.

We will have to walk on Highway D386 a short while before being able to cross the Azergues river. This is a real highway, wide, with a lot of fast-moving traffic, so this option is not very appealing. Right before the path gets to the highway, we are given the chance to take a hard right and stay in the forest a little bit longer.  This option would take us up and over Ruisseau du Pully, turn directly around on itself, and come out a little farther down the highway.  However, it seems like a long way to go just to get a few more hundred feet down the highway.  Plus, we haven't had good luck with rough paths crossing creeks.  More often that not, the path disappears and we end up retracing our steps back the way we came.  So we decide to just risk the shoulder of the highway for 250m.   

On the other side of the highway, we decide to take a little detour to the River Azergues itself.  We head down a somewhat steep, small rough path between the city sign and the guardrail.  I slip and fall on my butt.  I'm not hurt, but my arm becomes incredibly itchy for about 15 minutes after that.  I find a couple of teeny tiny thorns embedded into my arm.  I think the plants growing beside the path have some kind of poison on them. 

We climb back up the little path to the top of the bridge, which crosses the river, then a set of railroad tracks. It seems this bridge has two functions!

On the other side of the bridge is the Le Branle randonnée signpost, a VTT arrow, and a sign for "La Vieille Route."  They all tell us to go right and follow "La Vielle Route," as does the randonnée flag almost hidden on the bridge.  However, today we go left to head back towards Chamelet. 

We quickly lose the pavement as we enter the forest.  This forest really reminds us of hiking in our home province of British Columbia, Canada.  Although we run into a gigantic spider-web that reminds me more of Shelob's lair in Mirkwood Forest.  It even has a little tunnel.  Colin shudders and hurries down the path. 

We spot where "the trail continues onward" to the right, but we stay on the gravel road, which hairpins back on itself and heads towards the church we saw on our hike to Le Chateau de Chalosset.  At one point we see stairs heading up from the main trail, so we check it out.  They lead to a field.  As we descend, we really notice how shallow and steep these stairs are. 

We reach the little church, and turn left back towards Chamelet.  If we instead turned right at this intersection, as we did last time, we would end up at the Chateau de Chalosset.  Even though I know it is hopeless, I still can't help trying the door.  It is locked. 

The pavement, now under our feet, takes us parallel to the Azergues and the highway, directly back towards Chamelet.  We cross the Azergues, and can see the path we will take up the hill on the other side of the highway, but before we cross the Highway, we decide to go down to the river again. 

Colin sees a gravel road that heads down to the field under the bridge. We head down, and it crosses a feeder creek before opening into the field.  It appears to simply end.  I walk across the field, but only find someone's house/farm.  So we turn around and go back up to the highway. 

Crossing the Highway D385, there are signs pointing us back to Les Brotteaux.  The road here is already labelled as Chemin du Plat Fournier, even though at this point, it is technically Rue Saint-Julien.  

This road, like the one we hiked in on, runs parallel, but much closer to, the Highway D385.  We can see the cars whizzing by the numerous lumber yards.  Then the road curves away.

We arrive back at the intersection with the yellow randonnée sign, and keep on straight ahead into the little smattering of houses of Les Brotteaux.  In one yard, a donkey is looking mighty proud of his filly.  He struts around her while she flips her mane nonchalantly. 

Chamelet pops up in the distance and we start wondering how the Guinguette is going.  There are still many cars parked in front of the school on Highway D157E.  A black car pulls ahead of us and goes around the "road closed" sign towards Les Halles.   He has a "Je Suis Charlie" sign in his rear windshield.  We follow.  At the Halles, the music has stopped, but people are still eating and drinking.  The adults are now taking their turn in the face painting chair, and some of the results are quite spectacular.  I regret not asking a few of them for their photographs.  Looking online, I realize the amazing facepainting was done by Compagnie Desmodium, who will also be providing a fire-dancing show in the evening.   The black car parks at the Halles and the driver gets out to help the people who are starting to pack things up.

If things are finished up at the Halles, they should be in full swing down at the Pressoir.  We take our leave and head down through town, past the restaurant and bar, and cross the Azergues River.  

When we arrive back at the Pressoir, nothing seems to be happening.  There is practically no-one at the train station parking lot (Allée de la Gare).  It seems they are just barely starting to set up some tents in the Parc des Loisirs area.  At the Pressoir itself, there is only one child riding the car carousel ride.  Two kids are playing balloon darts, but not a one is interested in the "go fish" game.  A few adults are hanging out drinking wine in the shade.  With our now perfected Gaelic Shrug, we get back into the camionnette and drive back to the gite.  

After the sun sets, we walk down Le Cocon to see if we can see any fireworks.  We don't see any in Chamelet, but we can see a glow from over the hill to the Southwest of us... possibly in Dième?  What grabs my attention most are two glowing "stars" visible just over the hills to the North/Northwest.  I wonder if perhaps one or both are planets... maybe Venus or Jupiter?  That reminds me... some amazing photos of Pluto got released today.  Yay for New Directions!  Oops, I mean New Horizons!  ;)

By using the zoom on my camera, I can make out some sparklers and small fires near the Pressoir area.  Nothing of note.  We want to go down and check it out, but to walk down and back would take us an hour and a half... the festivities would probably be over by the time we got there, and then we'd still need to conquer the Chamelet hill to get back to the gite.  We decide against it.  There is wine in the gite.  ;)