Pont-de-Veyle has literary associations. Augustin de Ferriol d'Argental probably had the château built, which is now the mairie. His sons Antoine de Ferriol and Charles-Augustin were friends of Voltaire from their schooldays, and that friendship continued.
In 1824 Louis Augustin de Parseval bought the château. His brother Amédée was a close friend of Lamartine, and to this day a room in the former château is called 'La Salle de Lamartine'.
This is quite a smart one too, although the wire scratched me. As compensation (really out of interest) I took Patrick Besson and Danièle Thompson's La Boum: they were the scenarists of the film which launched Sophie Marceau.
I have been unable to find no information at all on this bread oven in Feillens.
This impressive monument, tucked away in a square in Replonges, is in honour of Raymond Dumay, who had worked as a shepherd, a schoolteacher, journalist and editor-in-chief of La Gazette des lettres. It says in Wikipédia that he was the first person to publish a guide to wine (Le Guide du vin, 1967), which I find impossible to believe. Although noted for his interest in wine and food, he wrote novels too, such as L'Herbe pousse dans la prairie, Le Rat et l'Abeille and La moisson de sel.
Also close to the lavoir murals in Replonge is a superb monument to Louis Desnoyers (1802-86), novelist and journalist born in Replonges and some of his works are mentioned here: Jean-Paul Choppart, Adventures de Robert Robert and Les Boétiens de Paris. He was also a founding member of La Société des Gens de Lettres and literary director of the journal Le Siècle.
Auguste Buchot (1851-83) is perhaps best known for his poetry books Les Ruines de Faucigny (1878) and Le Miroir indiscret (1879), although Georges Droux wrote an autobiographical booklet on him: Auguste Buchot: (avec un portrait du poète) (1889) in the Silhouettes contemporaines series. Buchot also wrote the non-fictional Histoire de Pierre Vaux, l'instituteur de Longepierre (1889), on the teacher wrongly accused of arson in Longepierre. There seems to be very little information readily available about him, although the medallion seems to belie his apparent thirty-two years.
Gabriel Vicaire (1848-1900) was a poet who was born in Belfort and who died in Paris. Some of his works were co-written with Henri Beauclair under the collective pseudonym Adoré Floupette. Many places in France are named after him, and the monument of him below is by Jean-Antoine Injalbert in Luxembourg, Paris, which I took a whole ten years ago. He's buried here because his father was born in Bugey, as were his paternal ancestors, and on his mother's side his ancestors came from Bresse.
In the middle of a traffic island near Château-Gaillard just at the junction with the A42 autoroute stands this representation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince, one of the most loved books in France as well as many other countries. The disc (made from local Villebois calcareous stone) shows Saint-Exupéry in flight, with Le Petit Prince and the fox in bronze on top of it. It is the work of Stéphane Paret from St-Rambert-en-Bugey.
In 2016 street artist Ted Nomad decorated the streets of Pont-de-Vaux with murals from photos of the people, not at the time having met them. These are representations of some of them.
I just love Boîtes à lire, and even if I can't find anything that pleases me – for the record in the three weeks I've been here I've given back far more books than I've taken – these mini-libraries are super. I don't think they'd work in England for many reasons, but then France is a different universe. This is in Ars-sur-Formans (Ain).
Jean-Marie Vianney (1786-1859), also known as 'Le Curé d'Ars', was a Catholic priest venerated by the Church. He was the curé in Ars for forty-one years. He earned great respect for his austerity: he ate little, spent many hours at prayer, and gave away what he had. Ars became a place of pilgrimage, as it indeed is today.
I made a post on Marie-Joseph Bonnat a few weeks ago, but here is the only photo I've ever seen of his grave in Pont-de-Vaux.
BONNAT
NÉ À GRIÈGES LE 25 MAI 1844
DÉCÉDÉ À TAQUAH
(AFRIQUE OCCIDENTALE)
LE 8 JUILLET 1881
PRIEZ POUR LUI'
Le Musée du train miniature in Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne isn't just a museum of miniature trains, and nor is it designed with children in mind: it's a mind-blowing experience of what can be achieved once an enthusiast (P. Crolle), indeed an obsessive person, decides to devote twenty years to a particular vision. The (often animated) models here, and they stretch from the shores of the Mediterranean, up the Rhône valley to Lyon to the Savoie country, are on a tiny but highly detailed scale. The model, which extends to 200 square metres, is fascinating.
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