Itinerary

Day 1: at road of iron
Day 2: at concert
Day 3: at leisure
Day 4: at leisure
Day 5: at leisure
Day 6: at leisure
Day 7: at road of iron.

Day 1

Your saga of discovery, declamation and degustation begins in the modern, glittering, united-Europe encounter-space which is Waterloo International station. Recall the thrill and din of the 1815 battle as you release the safety-catch of your passport, and tamp your ticket into the barrel of the electronic reader. Pile your luggage up into ramparts and defend your territory!

You are trundled in stately grandeur through the Garden of England, recalling the early railway pioneers such as George Stevenson and his, er, less successful rivals. Plenty of time to learn music but air conditioning not functioning so this is difficult.

Then you are plunged into the stygian blackness which is the Chunnel, or as our French neighbours so precisely describe it, Le Tunnel Sous La Manche. How can something shaped like a tunnel possibly be masculine? But then, look at the way they take their pharmaceuticals!

But then again, look at the way they build their railways. Your train will now speed up dramatically and hurtle in a straight line through northern France.

Change at Lille.

You are now on a TGV, which is French for Train At Big Speed. Unfortunately the French for buffet car is BLV (Bar à Lent Vitesse). Also, the gastronomie roulant is less than grand. But the air conditioning works, which is a big improvement on the Eurostar. Conditions are more conducive to learning music.

Pass through Lyon and admire the extensive, some might say continuous for many kilometres, work of the famous local graffiti artists.

Arrive Valance. It is hot. Transfer to bus which makes no pretence at having airconditioning. Stop whingeing, English bourgeois. Make your toilet in your respective accommodations.

Night: free to sleep, “relax” with your fellow (and female) singers, or learn your music.

Day 2

Find church. Clean chairs. Still time to learn music...

Morning: Rehearse.

Lunch: only a few pieces to learn...

Afternoon: rehearse.

The excitement of the day mounts as you deliberately leave mastery of Le Chant des Oiseaux (by Jannequin) until the last few hours before the concert. In singing as in athletics (and indeed in other physical activities) it is important not to peak too early. But this Jannequin arrangement appears a little more complex than the English version (The Birdie Song), and the elbow movements are considerably faster. And desultory whistling will not get you through.

Tournon-sur-Rhône is summer home to large flocks of swifts which continuously swoop around the rooftops. Surprisingly, this species is not among those featured in Le Chant des Oiseaux. Your conductor declines the offer to perform an additional verse based on “screech shree whirrgh zzreee”.

Remainder of afternoon at leisure. Or learning music.

Mid evening: basses rehearse dodgy bits.

Birdie song now secure. Time for a quick breather, and to apply ointment to sliced tongue and lips.

Late evening: perform concert. Impressive timing from thunder outside when choir inquires of the Lord “where is thy zeal and thy strength?”. But Birdie Song inexplicably several chirrups short of a twittering. Where is thy “frian” and thy “qui la-ra”?

Very late evening: attend wine cellar (which you will find in attic of chateau, rather than underground). Degustation thanks to hospitality of local hosts. This is first of many opportunities to learn about local wines, and there are many interesting facts to bear in mind while guzzling. First, do not guzzle Chateau-Grillet because it is produced from only a single site of 3½ hectares and only 10,000 bottles are made per year. Second, give thanks for the 1956 Mistral wind which froze the olive trees and prompted vine-growing instead. Third, wines grown on argillaceous limestone are to be laid down and not guzzled immediately. And finally, do not go to the Maison des Vins expecting to buy wines, because it is an office.

Very very late evening: still high on adrenaline and insufficiently “chilled”, as the young people say nowadays. It’s a choice between two bars on opposite sides of the street: one catering to young sporting types, with pool tables and organised shouting, and the other attracting a more cool, hip-hop clientele. You choose the latter, smiling cautiously at the baffled but polite stares of the local youths.

Extremely late evening: on way back to hotel, hear familiar sounds (though horribly garbled) emanating from bar which looks as though it ought to be closed. On closer inspection turns out to be English Baroque Choir members in “encores for booze” scandal.

Very extremely late evening: instead of continuing to sing in bar, sing as walk down street. Some people do not know when to stop. Thoughtfully diminuendo to ppp to avoid waking guests at own hotel, but this is still loud enough to wake proprietor. Perhaps you were really singing “m” as usual. Rather disappointingly, le patron informs ensemble that terrace bar is now closed and that you ought to allez aux chambres sans faire aucun encore bruit (this is a local dialect expression meaning “the champagne in the minibars is free”.

Day 3

Very early morning: facilities are available for you to continue to sleep in your bed. Alternatively, you may get up and run around the town. Victim support groups are available.

Morning free for shopping. Wander the quaint, narrow streets, where you may be accosted by men dressed as apricots. These could be mistaken for fat Dutch football supporters, except they offer you free apricots to eat, and speak French, so that is two coincidences too many. There is a market, highlight of which is chickens roasting and dripping their juices onto co-roasting potatoes below. Yum!

You will probably notice that the hillside opposite is terraced with large walls, adorned in large neat capital letters with the “tags” of the locals: Chapoutier, Jaboulet etc. This is a better class of grafitti than Lyon, and despite being foreign is much more legible than the ugly squiggles you see in London.

Afternoon free for finding a vineyard and degusting it. This is not so simple as it first appears, since to qualify for the degustation and tour you need to look a more serious wine-purchaser than you obviously do. And to qualify for buying wine, you need to attend a shop when it is open. And the vineyards are generally surrounded by “private, keep out” signs, apparently prompted by vandalism. What kind of person would vandalise vines?

To get the most out of the wine-drinking experience, we recommend that you proceed afterwards to the dining room of the most elegant hotel in town, and look for your English chums (who will be studying their cutlery with their hat brims pulled well down). Tell them loudly how many bottles of the grandest cru you have drunk. French diners will be impressed that you can still talk, though they may mistake your slurred rantings for an English regional accent. You will impress the local gourmets even more if you have selected a wine which must be laid down for at least five years. How they will laugh at your mischievous iconoclasm!

Alternative trip: Sentier des Tours. This is on the opposite side of the valley and therefore features less sun, less vines, more trees and indeed considerably more towers. Your circular tour (why did they not call it “tour des tours?”) starts at the Centre Culturel de Tourette, which may be named after a little tower, or, more interestingly, after that fellow who had a syndrome. What’s the f***ing point of having a f***ing cultural centre when the streets are full of dogsh** and English w***ers are staggering around guzzling our f***ing vintage f***ing wines? [That’s enough Tourette: Ed.]

Marvel at the antics of the ants as they carry breadcrumbs many times their own size back to their nest. Try feeding them cheese, and watch them turn up their little noses.

For the energetic, or inattentive sign-readers, it is possible to follow a path right to the top of the hill, where there is a fine view and a table d’orientation. This will not automatically orient you if you lie on it, but will help you find the way down again (or to various distant locations: see trip Options C and D).

Evening free for eating and drinking.

Day 4

Excursion on steam railway. The station is conveniently situated for your hotel, and this is well worth the minor inconvenience of heavy and very long freight trains thundering past every half-hour or so.

The train transports you back into a halcyon idyll of yesteryear, when children played barefoot in the street without fear of infected syringes, and parents spent their money on food rather than over-designed “training” shoes. When rosy-cheeked peasants would rush out to meet the train, offering for sale bucolic jams, rustic wines and agricultural confectionery. Actually they still do this bit.

The journey is a spectacular cavalcade of gorges, bridges, forests and pastoral vistas, as the track follows the foam-flecked fleuve far from the madding crowd. The wheels go clickety-clack in a very close approximation of a well-known Glitter Band hit.

You have 4 hours at leisure at Lamastre. This is not quite enough for lunch, but if you rush the dessert and try not to make too much of a palaver over paying the bill, you may just catch the return train.

In typically cavalier Continental fashion, passengers are allowed to ride on the open platforms at the end of the carriages, separated from hundreds of metres of precipice by only a delicate chain at knee height. But the guard assures us that only zero people plummet to their deaths in a typical year.

Evening not free for eating and drinking. As a gesture of thanks for last night’s exertions, you are invited to another concert in a village only a few miles down-river.

Day 5

For those still not tired of singing, the chapel in the chateau beckons, with its famous tryptych and its special acoustic properties.

Option A: go home.

Option B: continue to relax, tour, eat and drink.

Option A brings you back into contact with the British railway system, almost certainly a miserable end to your holiday, sorry, triumphant concert tour. But before this, you have a chance to test Tournon’s renowned “no pay, no bags” policy. Your journey will be all the more exciting as your coach trip to Valance TGV station is delayed by attempts to find out who has not settled his / her hotel bill. Is it the person whose bags have been confiscated? Is it someone else? A mercy dash by Gerard your host produces some sort of result.

Option B: If the afternoon heat gets too much, why not lie on your bed and watch television? EastEnders does not feature in the schedules, but there is something called Sous Le Soleil; this appears to be set in St Tropez, which is considerably easier on the eye than Walford. The characters are easier on the eyes and ears also.

An even better idea is to visit the local swimming pool. If you are a meticulous planner you will notice that the pool at Tain over the river is probably closer than Tournon’s, but if you are not, then you will duly walk the long and dusty road to the edge of town. If you are a particularly poor planner you will have arrived with “boxer” style swimming trunks, which tend to be banned in France for some unknown reason. Remember: slip oui, caleçon non.

So why not go for a walk instead? You can visit the statue of Marc Seguin, a local hero who invented a particularly successful type of steam boiler, then had to invent railways and steamships in which to use it. For good measure he built a suspension bridge to facilitate access to the station.

Evening free for yet another session in the bars and restaurants of “Tournon sur Road”. For entertainment there is always lorry-spotting, or for the bold you could try making a few citizen’s arrests of youths with excessively loud motor scooters and no crash helmets. If you haven’t got the balls for that, then you might like to watch the pétanque, where they have plenty of balls. Or you could dine with Mike, who has a huge repertoire of amusing aviation anecdotes.

Option C: go to mountains.

Option D: go to more vineyards.

Day 6

For the road user on foot, it is possible to combine elements of options C and D by climbing up to the chapel on top of the hill opposite. There are signposted walks, though the signposting requires some interpretation. Anticlockwise is better (as viewed from above ground), because you can start with gentle climbs and finish with the steep part going down. For the clockwise variant, you may need crampons. For the Peter Dean “route directe”, you will need crampons going up and futons at the top.

As there are now few of the party remaining in Tournon, you may be invited to a “simple salad” at the home of Michelle & Alain. This is a beautiful combination of good food, good wine, good company and magnificent views, with skylarks giving way to bats (to look at, not to eat) as the dusk falls and the lights twinkle in the far distance. A memorable conclusion to your stay.

Day 7

Visit museum.

Buy local newspaper. Read review of concert, which is very complimentary. Rejoice!

Afternoon: go home.

Evening: get home.