The long return, Fri, 03 Jul 2020 | written by Simon
Jemma and Simon at a Museum, UNESCO site in Europe, France

Last night we drove as far as we could and ended up crossing the French border at dusk. Jemma played Edith Piaf as loud as possible, of course. We said goodbye to motorways, and soon found a nice quiet parking lot for the night. It turned out to be perfect and we had a lovely chill breakfast the next day.

We decided we’ll aim to get to Spain by Saturday to leave ourselves the Sunday to chill before work on Monday. That means we need to speed up a bit, so the next attraction is determined by what is directly on our way. And we’re in luck – we have another UNESCO site right there! It’s an 18th Century salt works: Saline Royale de Arc-et-Senans. The first industrial complex to be added to the UNESCO list, the place was designed by the star-architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux for Louis XV, at the time when salt and salt tax were super profitable. On the way, we picked up some delicious French baguette and cheese, and munched them in front of the main entrance.

The saline is a fantastic example of Enlightenment architecture planning: the place is organised on a perfect semi-circle and is meant to be a wonder of efficiency and rational solutions. And it is really impressive indeed – the neo-classical symmetry of it all really makes the place look fantastic, and super peaceful. We wonder what it was like actually working here, but visiting is certainly very relaxing.

Right now, there is no factory equipment here – the manufacture was decommissioned a century ago. The place is used as a venue, tourist site, and a hotel. It’s beautifully kept and you can tell that it’s a site of the Gardening Festival – the gardens are amazing! They went around the issue of presenting history in this setting really well – we got pads which showed us how each place would look like when used for salt production, while in reality we were looking at the same walls housing other exhibitions. Quite nifty.

Interestingly, some of the perfectly rational design wasn’t so perfect: the heating systems for example were ill designed, with massive spaces which are hard to heat. The spaces and the fireplaces look great, just not so efficient, so the workers had to dismantle some of Ledoux’s fittings and put in more efficient ones. And it does seem a bit suspicious that this perfectly symmetrical, beautiful neoclassical design should really be the most efficient from the production perspective. I wonder whether this is the sort of thing that the Functionalists rebelled against in the 20th Century. Nevertheless, looks stunning.

We left and decided to drive as long as possible now, aiming to leave less driving for the next day. After a solid five hours and a quick dinner at a nice little lake, we stopped at a spot Jemma found on Park4Night, listed as next to a particularly pictoresque village. We’ll see tomorrow!