Solutré: The Rock, the Solutrean and Pouilly-Fuissé
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France
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Solutré: The Rock, the Solutrean and Pouilly-Fuissé
300 + 100 XP
The Roche de Solutré is a limestone escarpment above Solutré-Pouilly, 8 km west of Mâcon, rising to 493 m — a fossil coral reef of about 160 million years ago, now a Grand Site de France. Digging began in 1866 at the Cros du Charnier, at the foot of the rock, where horse bones were working their way out of the ground that nobody yet took for prehistoric; Henry Testot-Ferry and Adrien Arcelin found hearths and graves set in rough slabs, and the deposit turned out to be one of the richest in Europe in bones and stone tools. Gabriel de Mortillet defined the Solutrean from it in 1872. The story that hunters stampeded horses over the cliff comes from Arcelin's own novel, Solutré ou les chasseurs de rennes de la France centrale, not from the digs — and it collapses on the simplest test, because the bone beds are a long way from the foot of the cliff. The hill has been occupied for at least 55,000 years. François Mitterrand first climbed it in 1946 with his brother-in-law Roger Gouze and they promised to come back every year, at Easter at first and then at Whitsun for the better weather; he made the climb every year until 1995, when illness stopped him halfway and his friends finished the fiftieth pilgrimage without him.
Required Activities
1
of 6
Climb to the 493 m summit and look for what is not there: a stronghold with a heavy crenellated keep stood up here, put up around 930 and reputed a bandits' nest, until Philip the Good ordered it destroyed outright by an act signed at Dijon on 22 December 1434 — then look at what grows on the bare top, the dry calcicolous grassland of the Mâconnais
2
of 6
Find the Cros du Charnier at the foot of the rock, where horse bones were sticking out of the ground in 1866 and nobody yet guessed they were prehistoric, and work out what Testot-Ferry found next on the same spot: the hearths of the reindeer age, and graves lined with rough slabs
3
of 6
Find the Musée de Préhistoire before you find the door: Guy Clapot put the whole building, opened in May 1987, under a dome planted with vegetation so that it would barely show from a distance. Inside, the finds are displayed on the spot where they came out of the ground, with models reconstructing the hunts
4
of 6
Stand at the Cros du Charnier where the bones came out, then look up and across to the top of the cliff and pace the distance between the two: nothing driven off that summit lands anywhere near here, which is how the stampede story was disposed of
5
of 6
Taste a Pouilly-Fuissé in one of the appellation's four communes — Chaintré, Fuissé, Vergisson or Solutré-Pouilly — and ask for a premier cru beside it: the classification only exists since November 2020 and covers 159 of the appellation's 759 hectares. The hyphen in the name was put there to stop people confusing it with pouilly-fumé, which is a Loire wine
6
of 6
Walk up the Roche de Vergisson, the sister rock along the same escarpment — Lamartine called the pair two petrified ships above a sea of vines — and note that in 1992 Mitterrand climbed this one instead of Solutré, to shake off the crowd and the television cameras
Climb to the 493 m summit and look for what is not there: a stronghold with a heavy crenellated keep stood up here, put up around 930 and reputed a bandits' nest, until Philip the Good ordered it destroyed outright by an act signed at Dijon on 22 December 1434 — then look at what grows on the bare top, the dry calcicolous grassland of the Mâconnais
Find the Cros du Charnier at the foot of the rock, where horse bones were sticking out of the ground in 1866 and nobody yet guessed they were prehistoric, and work out what Testot-Ferry found next on the same spot: the hearths of the reindeer age, and graves lined with rough slabs
Find the Musée de Préhistoire before you find the door: Guy Clapot put the whole building, opened in May 1987, under a dome planted with vegetation so that it would barely show from a distance. Inside, the finds are displayed on the spot where they came out of the ground, with models reconstructing the hunts
Stand at the Cros du Charnier where the bones came out, then look up and across to the top of the cliff and pace the distance between the two: nothing driven off that summit lands anywhere near here, which is how the stampede story was disposed of
Taste a Pouilly-Fuissé in one of the appellation's four communes — Chaintré, Fuissé, Vergisson or Solutré-Pouilly — and ask for a premier cru beside it: the classification only exists since November 2020 and covers 159 of the appellation's 759 hectares. The hyphen in the name was put there to stop people confusing it with pouilly-fumé, which is a Loire wine
Walk up the Roche de Vergisson, the sister rock along the same escarpment — Lamartine called the pair two petrified ships above a sea of vines — and note that in 1992 Mitterrand climbed this one instead of Solutré, to shake off the crowd and the television cameras
Before you go
The Musée de Préhistoire is a departmental museum with a published calendar: 10am to 6pm from 4 April to 1 November, 11am to 5pm from 7 February to 3 April, from 2 to 29 November and from 19 December to 3 January, and closed every Monday. It shuts from 5 January to 6 February and again from 30 November to 18 December, and on 1 January, 1 May and 25 December — so a January or early-December visit gets the rock, the Cros du Charnier and the vines but not the finds. The climb to the 493 m summit is on open limestone that is slippery in the wet and exposed in the wind, and the growers' cellars in the four Pouilly-Fuissé communes mostly open by arrangement.
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Challenge XP
300 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
400 XP
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