“Carbon dioxide, a colourless gas with a molecular weight of 44.01.  Symptoms of toxicity include dizzyness, mild narcosis and confusion”.

Today was going to be a reasonably short drive south towards the edge of the burgundy region.  But, instead of driving at breakneck speed down autoroutes we were going to take the more sedate, smaller roads where we could enjoy the peaceful surroundings of small towns, villages, open countryside.  We were   Looking forward to using phrases like ” look at that up ahead” instead of  “what was that?”.  And so we set off, in beautiful sunshine anticipating things of interest to observe on the route.  The Sat Nav was set to avoid those nasty, but efficient autoroutes and was instructed to direct us on the smaller roads only.  An hour in to our 2 hour journey our biological GPS kicked into action, and, unless the earth no longer spun in the same direction, in which case, we had bigger problems than we first thought…we sensed we were travelling in totally the wrong direction.  A quick look at the road map, confirmed our error  – searching for the cause of the problem, we first suspected Tom and his twin brother Tom for directed us wrongly, only to find that In fact they were directing us to exactly the location that was entered.  Knowing very well, that it was not my fault, I can only assume it was the toxicity of the carbon dioxide from the bubbles in the excessive amount of champagne consume the previous night.  If anyone else can think what it might be, please let us know.

6 hours later !, we arrived At Vézelay a beautiful hilltop village and an UNESCO heritage site 

At the heart of this beautiful village is the basilique Ste- Madeleine, founded in 880D on a Roman site but had been destroyed and rebuild on several occasions, but remnants from the 12 Century remain in existence.

 Edit

You’ll be pleased to know, that no carbon dioxide has been consumed this evening so hopefully we’ll arrive at tomorrow’s destination before sunset !