Tuesday 20th September 2022 – Gray, France

 

One of the things that I love about touring is stumbling across unexpectedly interesting places and Paray-le-Monial is one of those gems. The aire is very close to the town centre and a two minute walk took us on a bridge over the river Bourbince with a great view of the Chateau du Abbé and the Basilica, a former priory church. The Tourist Information Office was opposite the basilica and we were given an English language copy of the town trail. A very pleasant couple of hours were spent following the trail and reading the excellent information boards. As we followed the route, we looked out for interesting restaurants and decided on the ‘Restaurant du Champ de Foire’ that had an interesting ‘menu de jour’, three courses for the very reasonable price of €14.80. We walked in the door to find the large restaurant virtually full with workers. When one is lucky enough to find one of these restaurants, there is a guarantee of good food. The first course was a buffet with a large choice of cold dishes – paté, ham, boiled eggs, carrot salad, green salad, lentils, pasta etc., etc. The main course was the ‘plat de jour’, meat balls wrapped in ham with pasta and sauce. There was a choice of about six deserts. Excellent quality food at a very good price.
We had a fairly short drive to our next stop at Gray and the very clear weather gave us views to the hills in the distance. We selected a pitch at the aire outside the Longue Rive campsite.

Photos: Paray-le-Monial chateau and basilica in the evening sun and by night; The basilica; Part of a mosaic created in 1997 and consisting of over 165,000 tesserae; The Restaurant du Champ de Foire; Sunset from our pitch at the Gray aire.