Château de Flaugergues

29-9-2010
Originally uploaded by cspatrick

Wednesday, September 29, 2010 Day 91
We opened the morning at the Peyrou again, then cleaned house, and ate lunch. I had planned an outing for us which called for bicycling east, so we set out on our adventure to get bikes. We went to the nearest bike stall and got a bike, but there was only one available. The machine which dispenses the keys said there was another site with bikes at the Observatorie, so Roger walked there and I biked. Because of the construction, I had to walk the bike a good deal, and Roger had already scouted the Observatorie by the time I arrived – no bikes. We went a bit further to a location where he thought there was a rental stand, but no luck either. So we went up to the Comedie and the tourist office, where there were bicycles. The machine dispensed a key to a particular bike, and he hopped on. We got a ways away and I noticed a cable hanging off the back of the bike. He took a look and saw it was the gear mechanism. He remarked that he hadn’t been able to get the gearshift to work (only three gears). We took the bike to the next rental stand and turned it in, but there were no bikes available there either. I rode and he walked down to the next one, and he finally got a bike working bike.
Finally we were able to set out on our adventure. We biked east for 20 minutes or so and arrived at a folie – another of those country homes which has crept inside the city limits. This one is called Château de Flaugergues. It is a three-story house built between 1696 and 1730. Its particular claim to fame is the hanging staircase with keystone vaulting, which takes up one-third of the entire volume of the building and is quite lovely. The chateau is hung with three tapestries (I thought our guide said there were five, but we saw only three) depicting events in the life of Moses. These are Flemish tapestries which actually belong to the French government. The chateau is owned by Henri and Brigitte de Colbert, who live with their family on the premises and allow tours of a portion of their lovely home. The gardens are more extensive than those we visited previously. When we arrived we were given a pamphlet in English on which was a tour of the gardens “conducted” by Herbert the Hedgehog. It was a cute way to spend an hour while waiting for the tour of the chateau to start. There is a formal French garden (only restored in the past 20 years or so), a more casual English garden, and an upper Alley of Olives stretching 200m to the south, 150 to the north. Beyond this are the vineyards of the chateau, perhaps 100 acres. We did not stay around after the tour to taste the wine – we were on our bikes and neither wanted to ride impaired nor try to carry a bottle of wine back to the apartment. We returned to the Comedie to turn in our bikes.
We have very mixed feelings about our biking experience. The first is availability. Oddly enough, there were several bikes at each of the automated rental stands we visited, but when we swiped a card, the message came up that none was available, or only one. We are not sure what the deal is – are these already rented out by the yearly-subscription people and thus not available to us? Is the system out of whack so that the rental stand does not “see” them? In Paris, the bikes were redistributed every night, but I don’t think that takes place here. I don’t know how often this happens, or how often the bikes are checked for issues. In our case, Roger just parked the broken bike – he knew of no way to report it, and even if he did, it would be in French, which is burdensome. But as it is, this bike became immediately available for another renter, who is going to be equally stuck with a broken bike. Another issue is that the bikes are big, clunky and heavy. That’s not as big a deal for Roger as it is for me. I didn’t always feel totally in control of the bike. And then there’s general maintenance – my bike’s brakes were stiff. I was squeezing both grips tightly to stop and the brakes were still not as responsive as I would have liked. And then there is the issue of helmets. We didn’t want to incur the expense of helmets if we weren’t going to be using them, so we rode without them the first time – not the ideal situation. We need to have a discussion about whether we will be bicycling enough to justify the purchase, although I realize that is not the real issue, which is wearing the helmets at all times and damn the expense. So it remains to be seen whether we will be bicycling more or not. I did see a used bike for sale on a local English website, but the ad started out by stating that the wheels were kind of rusty – not a good enticement to buy!