After Marseille, the forty members set off to explore the Gironde prefecture.
After visiting Marseille in 2023, the Société des lettres de la Lozère recently offered its members the historical and cultural discovery of Bordeaux and its region. Forty people were thus able to follow a particularly rich program prepared with great care by Jean Villemagne.
The stay began with a visit to the emblematic vineyard. If the vine was successfully introduced there 2000 years ago by the Romans, it has been the trump card of Aquitaine and the Bordeaux port for almost 1000 years. The stopover in Saint-Émilion, in the vineyards in the colors of autumn, was particularly appreciated with the visit of the heritage town, the old troglodytic church which sheltered the holy hermit founder Emilio, the guided tour of the cellars and the tasting of great classified wines. The lunch at the orangery of the Château de Mouchas shared with the owner of the place was a real success.
Links between Bordeaux and Lozère
Faced with so many appellations and grape varieties presented by their host Laure Sauvan d'Aramon, the president of the Société des Lettres Jean-Marc Chevalier, with humor, wanted to recall some water stories, emphasizing in particular that if the flourishing trade Bordeaux wine experienced its tremendous expansion at the beginning of the 20th centurye century, it is also thanks to Lozère which carried out the reforestation of its slopes (Lot, Tarn and Aigoual) to avoid erosion upstream and silting downstream of the Gironde…
Everywhere the Lozère delegation was received by the best guides. In Bordeaux, even the city tour, starting from places like the Miroir d'eau, overlooking the curve of the Garonne nicknamed the Port of the Moon, the Stock Exchange and the Place des Quinconces (the largest in Europe) , made it possible to recall medieval Bordeaux and its disappeared fortifications. A few monumental doors remain, the location of the palace of Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose personality loomed large throughout the stay.
Bordeaux, ancient capital
Between visiting two richly furnished churches, lunch at the Intercontinental Hotel allowed us to admire the vast peristyle of the Bordeaux theater located opposite. An evening dinner cruise offered guests the view of the Chaban-Delmas bridge, in its nocturnal habit of blue light and to take the measure of the vast Aquitaine bridge.
Both passionate about her hometown and about architecture in particular, the guide who accompanied the group of Lozériens for two days did not fail to recall the contribution of Bordeaux to France, through its writers and philosophers (Montaigne, Montesquieu and Mauriac), its great mayors such as Jacques Chaban-Delmas or Alain Juppé, both Prime Minister, emphasizing that Bordeaux was once the capital of France three times, in 1870, 1914 and 1940. It was in fact from Bordeaux that General de Gaulle flew to London…
A large port
The last day was devoted to visiting the Bassins des Lumières, a recent major artistic creation, an extraordinary reconversion of the pharaonic German arsenal for the construction and launching of submarines, in 1942. Devoted to pictorial art , the exhibition “From Vermeer to Van Gogh” offers in giant formats the works of Dutch artists appreciated from footbridges spanning the German basins: magical! The stay ended with a visit to the very rich private sea-marine museum, reminding us that Bordeaux is first and foremost a major French port.
