Wednesday 1st July – Week 3 – Dijon / Alsace

Boy was I grumpy this morning. It all started the previous night, when I slammed my finger in a door, trying to manouver my way into the washing cubicle in the Beaune campground. The problem is that, any cubicle you have to shut a door on, you have to get through the door and then wedge yourself between the toilet or wash basin in order to be able to shut the door. I don't know who designed the facilities in the Beaune campground, but they don't bear any resemblance to any dimensions that I possess.

Beaune is a stop off point halfway between Calais and the south coast of France. Everybody in the campground is there for just one night, and I think the design of the facilities reflects this. After the finger crushing incident last night, the shower cubicle doesn't have a lock, the hooks are on upside down and all the toilets were full for an age when I arrived at my usual time, which in other campgrounds has seen me have the full facility to myself.

Anne came back and said that all the women had commented that these were the worst facilities they'd come across. It amused me that the women discussed this and the shared suffering helped them all get over it. There was not a word spoken in the men's facilities and I suspect everyone of us was seething. OK, got that off my chest. So after one very hot and muggy night (that didn't help my mood either) we packed up the tent and headed off on the road to Dijon

Dijon is the capital of burgundy and as such is a largish city of quarter of a million people. In the past, it has been incredibly wealthy and this is reflected in the magnificent historic buildings in the centre of the town.

The traffic was pretty busy getting into town, so we found a car park within close walking distance of the city centre and headed off on foot to explore the town centre. As we walked along the street, we noticed some big brass placards in the footpath with an owl logo on them. There owl is a little carving housed in the Notre Dame Cathedral, that is supposed to give good luck if you rub it with your left hand. The symbol is also used on little brass arrows all around the city, to lead you on a walking tour.

We, however, had the Michelin guide tour, which we followed. The first stop was the Eglise Notre Dame, which had a fairly gruesome facade with three tiers of gargoyles all leaping out of the front of the church. The church wasn't open, so we headed off to the Place de La Liberation. This is a large semi-circular place, with the town hall on the flat edge of the semi-circle. The centre of the Place has a series of water fountains coming straight out of the paving stones, so you are able to walk right over them, which a number of very wet small children obviously had done. The outside of the Place contained a bunch of restaurants. At mid morning, the place was still quite quiet, so we headed off down some side streets and found some local markets and a busy shopping area. Although it's a big city, Dijon had a really good feel to it with a really lively street scene. Sorry to report, but in our short visit we did not see anybody selling mustard.

After Dijon, it was a much longer drive via motorways full of trucks in scorching heat to the Alsace. The Alsace is a series of very small villages and we've chosen one called Ribeauville to camp in for 4 days. The Alsace, home of the Alsatian dog, is very close the the German border and the german influences are very evident. The towns, which some people have described as chocolate box, are much more elaborately decorated than your average French town, but this is reasonably typical of German towns. The local cuisine consists of such favourites as Sauerkrautt, Spleitzly, pork sausages and potatoes.

The campground is of a really good quality and we have a very nice pitch with plenty of shade. The facilities are top notch, the staff are really friendly and it's the sort of place that people come to for a week, so it has more of a “permanent” feel about it.

After pitching our tent, we headed into town centre, which is about a 15 minute walk away. If we thought at Burgundy was full on wine production, it is nothing compared to the Alsace, where they have been growing grapes since about the 3rd century. Today, the whole region is devoted exclusively to growing wine and it is just staggering how much grape production there is. It seems that there are only two things that are important here – grapes and god. Every town is built around a church and everybody lives in the town, so that the productivity of the hillsides are maximised for growing grapes.

Ribeauville is a lovely medium sized village, which means that the main street is a kilometre or so long and has shops, bars, restaurants and wine caves all the way up it. The town can't be much more than three blocks from one side to the other – kinda like Dannevirke, but interesting, so not like Dannevirke at all.Once you've walked up the main street and down a couple of side streets you've pretty much seen the entire town and it is beautiful . You'll see some photos of the town and some of the others that you're about to read about and they are pretty stunning. The locals obviously take a huge amount of time to ensure that the towns look at their absolute best during the summer months.

Our dinner was in one of the restaurants, which served a mixture of more traditional French cuisine as well as the local food. We opted for the more traditional option, but vowed after watching the other diners that we'd be eating cabbage, sausages and potatoes at the next opportunity – when in Rome and all that.