Chapter XXIV: Section XXII: St. étienne to Moulins, 109½ Miles

(177 KILOMETRES)

DISTANCES ALONG THE ROUTE

Kil. Miles. =St. Étienne= to Feurs =38= 23½ =Feurs= to Roanne =39= 24¼ =Roanne= to La Pacaudière =23= 14¼ =La Pacaudière= to La Palisse =26= 16 =La Palisse= to Varennes =21= 13 =Varennes= to Moulins =30= 18½

NOTES FOR DRIVERS

=St. Étienne to La Fouillouse.=--Is a picturesque, hilly road.

=La Fouillouse to Balbigny.=--Is level.

=Balbigny to near Roanne.=--The road goes through a hilly country,
but there are no formidable gradients.

=Roanne to La Palisse.=--A hilly road.

=St. Germaine l’Espinasse.=--Has a bad _cassis_ or _caniveau_.

=La Pacaudière to Moulins.=--A fairly level road.

=Bessay.=--Has a bad _caniveau_.

PLACES OF INTEREST ON THE ROUTE

=St. Étienne.=--A large industrial town in one of the great
coalfields of France; manufactures include armour-plate, machinery,
rifles and arms, and silk ribbon.

=Feurs.=--A small manufacturing town, containing a few old houses.

=Roanne.=--A busy manufacturing town, quite uninteresting.

=La Pacaudière.=--A picturesque village.

=La Palisse.=--On the Bèbre; is a small town, with a large château of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

=Varennes-sur-Allier.=--A small place, with quaint houses.

St. Étienne owes its prosperity to its extensive coalfields, covering about 100 square miles. The annual production of the mines is given as from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 tons. The town also employs thousands of men in the iron foundries, where armour-plate and machinery and all sorts of large castings are made. A very large output of rifles and revolvers is another source of wealth to the town, and the ribbon industry, largely carried on in the homes of the workmen, keeps 40,000 men employed. The weavers, as a rule, show their looms to visitors without the least objection.

The Palais des Beaux Arts contains a good picture-gallery and a museum of gun-making and looms, but otherwise there is little to see in this town, consisting mainly of one very long street.

THE ROAD TO ROANNE

From St. Étienne until one reaches Fontainebleau the towns and villages have fewer antiquities and, on

the whole, less picturesqueness than farther south, and if time is running short this portion of the tour can be hurried over with less fear of missing good things than any other part of the route described. The scenery is delightful in some districts, but comparatively tame in others.

At the red-roofed village of La Fouillouse the tramway from St. Étienne stops. The valley, although containing so many factories and such a busy town, is extraordinarily free from smoke, and the fields are as clean and bright as though there were no industrial activities for many miles.

At the end of the valley the distant peep of mountains, snow-covered until May, is delightful on a sunny morning. The road goes nearly due northwards through the flat, marshy Plaine-du-Forez, through which the Loire winds a snaky course. Hills surround the plain on all sides, and the pastoral scenes of grazing cattle, backed by the snowy ridges to the west, are most paintable.

At the village of Meylieu-Montrond there is a complete shell of a castle on the right bank of the Loire. The reddish-coloured road keeps very straight between rows of poplars, and in a short time brings one to Feurs, a busy little place where, among other things, they make sabots.

There was a town here called _Forus_ in Gallo-Roman times, but there are no remains to interest the passing traveller beyond a few old houses.

Balbigny is an uninteresting village on the Loire, just where the road leaves the level ground and begins to enter the tumble of hills enclosing the northern end of the plain. The views obtained are most exhilarating all the way to Roanne, and one frequently has great panoramic views of the Loire, which appears as a huge blue serpent in the midst of the green and reddish-brown fields.

The road passes through the villages of Neulise, Vendranges, and l’Hôpital, and then drops down to the red-roofed town of

ROANNE

There is nothing to detain visitors in this busy manufacturing town, for all that was interesting or picturesque, beyond a few houses of the sixteenth century, has disappeared. The streets are narrow and not beautiful.

North of Roanne the vine appears again, after having disappeared since leaving the Rhone Valley.

The enormous plain of the Loire extends to the north, with mountains on the western horizon, dominated by the silvery grey peaks of the Auvergnes.

Built in the fifteenth century. The spires of the cathedral are modern work by Viollet-le-Duc. (_Page 365._)]

La Pacaudière is a picturesque village, with a conspicuously attractive old house on the left, having a steeply pitched turreted roof of dark brown tiles, and a carved stone doorway of the sixteenth century. One notices the gradual disappearance of the low-pitched roof as one goes northwards.

La Palisse is a picturesque town on the pretty River Bèbre. The turreted château on the right above the road and river dates from the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, and has a Flamboyant Gothic chapel, containing the tombs of the family of Chabannes. Jacques de Chabannes, often called La Palisse, became Marshal of France, and was killed at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.

The road crosses the river opposite the château, and then goes out of the village westwards along a beautiful road, bordered by tall and stately poplars, standing like rows of pillars on the short, close-growing turf on each side of the way. Small flocks of sheep, feeding on the roadside grass, and tended by girls, who fill up their time with industrious knitting, are often passed.

All the low-pitched roofs have been left behind, and the villages are picturesque with thatch and weather-worn tiles and little hipped dormers. The country is slightly undulating and green, and to the south the strangely shaped peaks of the volcanic mountains of the Auvergne group are seldom out of sight.

Farther on one reaches the shallow depression in which, on sunny days, the River Allier sparkles between its low banks.

The men of this part of the centre of France wear black felt hats and blue smocks, and have side-whiskers and clean-shaven lips and chins, after the fashion of the peasants of Normandy.

Varennes-sur-Allier is a quietly picturesque little town, with many old roofs and overhanging eaves, supported with wooden brackets.

In the pretty village of Bessay there is a bad _caniveau_ across the road, but otherwise there is little calling for comment on the rest of the way to Moulins.