Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Saint Quentin Fallavier - 30th April

I optimistically believed a website saying that our town had a produce market today in the church square.

This was highly unlikely as

• a) it's Sunday so the church grounds are busy and
• b) in France Sunday is a day of worship so activities such as markets are forbidden or at least frowned upon.

Deafened by the bells, we queued up with the rest of the non-church goers to get our daily bread.

Respecting France’s culture we went home and waited out the time until it was considered reasonable to go about our day which for us was one o’clock, a couple of hours before the chateau we wanted to visit, opened.

However first on the list was a couple of geocaches: the first in Charantonnay at a church that was once deemed unnecessary so it was pulled apart and redistributed to other villages bit by bit. In 1840 it was rebuilt for us to do a cache, or not, because somebody keeps nicking the cache we are looking for!The church that didn't have a geocache

Cheese Experience No. 9. Geocaching and cheese history Our second geocache was based around the history of rail dependency and small cheese farms. From 1909 to 1936 a train use to go from Lyon to Saint Marcellin taking 9 hours and along the way picked up cheese from a small dairy producer in Charantonnay. However the railway lines and trains got old and the journey started taking 24 hours so it was eventually stopped, as did the cheese factory. All that remains today is a bus stop; no history sign, no old building but in the distance you can see the high speed trains which don’t carry freight.

The next two geocaches were in Saint Quentin Fallavier at a chateau and at nearby river walk. The Fallavier chateau was built in the 13th century, in ruins by the 17th, somewhat restored by a rich guy and volunteers in 1970, then in 1992 became the property of the town council. There are still thousands of stones lying around for them to put back in place.  As we were walking to the entrance a workman told us the chateau was closed because they were preparing for a medieval festival next weekend but we could walk round the grounds. Fortunately for us somebody left the chateau door open and we followed the crowds into the castle for a free tour. The only restored bit is the large cylinder shaped tower that goes below the ground as much as it does above.