Whilst I didn’t upload it to my Strava, and despite no jogging yesterday, I still did quite a workout, and I have some residue of that in my muscles today! Starting out on Monday evening at 8pm, and returning home yesterday at 13h30 (over 700km later), I had one of my shortest ever trips to Beaune – the reason, to repatriate the other two-thirds of my wine-cellar.

When I moved house in 2015, I had some place for wine but it didn’t look enough. So a friendly vigneron offered space in their cuverie for what turned out to be two very highly stacked pallets worth of wine and the rent was only a bottle here and there. After 3 years of kindness, they needed the space. I didn’t find another place in Beaune, so it was all coming back to Switzerland with me. There are, of-course, technically, some issues with that. The wine started in Switzerland, which is not in the EU, but I anyway drove to Beaune with it, without a hitch. Coming back to Switzerland was also potentially fraught with customs issues, even though that’s where the wine started out from. Anyway, maybe yesterday’s rain (on the French side of the border) kept the roving patrols of the douane in their cafés. I made it home intact.

I’d hired a van for my two pallets, and in theory it only had a little under 1,100kg as a payload limit – I think I had closer to 1,200kg – but with no passengers – so that’s fair, no(?!) Thankfully the pallets could be loaded with a forklift so all those cases didnt have to be individually stacked! After arriving home, I’d got 3 hours to unload the van or I’d be paying for a second day of van-hire – that concentrated the mind – oh and the leg and arm muscles! Give-or-take it was 120 cases of wine to take out of the van, carry them down into the cellar, work out how best to stack them, and then head back up the stairs for the next one(s). Whilst I said 120 cases, many were 6-packs (1 6-pack, I still counted as 1 case) and the majority of the cases were not complete.

I’m guessing I brought back 650-750 bottles, and I didn’t have the chance to check the contents of all the cases – yes I am completely unorganised and only the foggiest idea what now lies in wait for me! But drinking at home will now be a little more (Burgundian) diverse, and always with a nice surprise as I find things, I already noted some unopened six-packs of 1999s… 🙂

And on Friday – it’s back to Beaune!

No, not me.

Last night, with a glass in hand in Vougeot (more on that at the weekend), I heard a big crash. I looked out to see a clever gentleman who had crashed into a parked car. I instantly assumed my car when I heard the sound – well things come in threes don’t they? But no, it was someone equally unfortunate, but this time, not me.

The driver started to reverse his car from ‘the embrace’ and I instantly thought ‘he’s going to drive away’ – and he did. I thought to myself ‘I wonder if he’s left any evidence?’ and sure enough, when I turned over the large plastic bumper…

We laughed – well, not the lady whose car it was – obviously…

Skyrock…
Fun Radio…
The Hits…

Seemingly the radio stations of choice for car thieves – they even installed them as presets in my car radio!

Today the scoobaru was rescued from the police pound near Lausanne – a whole day had to be devoted to this! Scooby was stolen in the vineyards of the Côte d’Or and turned up in the vineyards of Valais – I had assumed that it was somebody who simply couldn’t be bothered to pay the TGV fare to get back home – but the policeman said ‘Nope, these were real bandits.‘

Of-course they have taken dumb things from the car – driving glasses/sunglasses, a couple of cushions et-cetera – they had even simply cut off, at the cables, and pocketed the LED ‘daylights’ from the car – otherwise all seems okay – there’s even more petrol in it now than when I parked in Beaune!

I should be particularly thankful that they had nicely parked the car at the Swiss BMW dealership where it was found, because having done so, they then broke the window of a BMW to gain access and then use it to ‘ram-raid’ into the dealership, they then drove off in a nice new BMW. Of-course compared to my 12 year-old scooby, that’s not really trading-up, is it? Anyway, that’s the reason that the police latched onto a stolen Subaru so soon. Now back to the insurance reports…

A different style of vineyard panorama today. Approaching Lausanne… pic.twitter.com/kIEv29EqX8

— 🅱️ill nanson (@billnanson) June 22, 2017

A few weeks back I was walking through the vines in Gevrey-Chambertin, and I noticed that one of the most iconic vineyard houses of the Côte d’Or was shrouded in scaffolding!

The house in question neighbours Ruchottes-Chambertin, sitting in the wholly owned Gevrey-Chambertin 1er of Les Issarts – and Faiveley are the sole owners.

I visited Faiveley this week, so was finally able to ask Erwan about this small project…

“Ah the house in Les Issarts, I’ve wanted to renovate it for such a long time. I’m really glad that we finally did it this year, because literally the house was crumbling. It was once a drinking and smoking den so we blocked-up the doors and windows – it turned out that this was really lucky as the lintels were crumbling, so it was only the fact that we’d blocked up the windows and doors that stopped the walls falling down.

“It’s going to be an artist’s atelier, actually a sculptor, the lady that did the sitting sculpture of the monk that is outside the Château de Gevrey-Chambertin – this was really a great idea, as I didn’t really want a maison d’hôte. I’m really looking forward to it!

Me too!
 

2008

2016

2016

2016

Ah the joy of getting French car insurance companies to speak to Swiss car insurance companies, is something I cannot begin to describe – even when they are both AXA! If they don’t get a move-on, I may have to boycott AXA-Millésimes…

Note my car was correctly parked, in the parking, when somebody decided to crash into it and damage 4 (parked) cars, plus their own…