Mâcon - The Reunion is Underway

---

We travelled to Mâcon to meet a group of friends and to pick up Penichettes at the Locaboat base in Mâcon. We were to be sailing along the Saône, Seille and the Canal du Centre to reach Saint-Léger-sur-Dheune in a week. Those joining this cruising party came here from many places and they will move on to many others after this week. Most of them have a connection with the Northern Territory in Australia and, every couple of years or so, we find a reason to gather on a body of water and float about. Some still live in the NT. Some still work for a living. We are all becoming older though and fewer are employed every year.

Enough about us and on to Macon, the starting point for this journey.

Mâcon is a city in the Burgundy (Bourgogne) region of east-central France and is the capital of the Saône-et-Loire Department. It has a population of a little over 30,000 people and has substantial infrastructure but has the feel of a relatively small town. The main attractions are a Museum of the Ursulines and a Romanesque church with twin steeples. In our movements around the town we noted rather more empty or abandoned buildings, particularly in apparently attractive sites - for instance the waterfront along the Saône River - than you might expect in a city that is doing well.

We should note, for anyone making the trip to Mâcon, that there are two TGV stations that service Mâcon. Some trains come in at the station in town. Others come in at a station 7km out of Mâcon itself. Another way of getting here is by TGV to Lyon and then a TER to town. Slower trip but you come in at the station in town.

Finding a taxi can require some persistence and more so if you arrive at the station outside town. There are buses but be prepared to wait and to have a good look around the country on the way to town. Booking a taxi ahead of time can apparently work. Most of the taxis seem to be private operators and calling them each in turn until you find one who answers and is available can be tedious but can also work. Once you find a taxi you will, if our single experience is a guide, be well satisfied.

Mâcon is too small to have a decent taxi service but too large to really get the cute village thing going. It is, nevertheless, a reasonable place to stay with a number of accommodation options, some good restaurants and brasseries and an array of bars. The best restaurant we found in our short stay was L'Autre Rive which is actually over the bridge across the Saône in Saint Laurent. Not Michelin star, but in the book. An excellent dinner for each of the 12 of us now travelling together and good value as well.

Unfortunately, we blew it a little here with our accommodation choice. The place was clean and safe but a long way from the places we needed to access regularly, no easily available food options close by, metal 'roller door' type shutters on the windows, poor internet, a reception that was open occasionally and a bed that wasn't quite broken but wasn't quite right. Not good enough for the money we paid. Our failure to pay attention during the selection process came home to bite us.

The Locaboat base here is a couple of kilometres from the centre of the city. We hired from this company before in Ireland so we had some experience both of the system and the boats. There are 12 of us across two boats and that is pretty comfortable. We had to be briefed by the company to ensure that we would do the right thing and handle the boats properly without damaging either it or ourselves. It is all fairly logical.

We received the boat and could have left the marina immediately but, as it was relatively late in the day, we delayed our departure until the next morning. So we stayed on board and had a welcome drink or two after collecting some of the provisions for the trip.

---

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

City Lights
Magical walk