Great visit and tour of EPERNAY France CHAMPAGNE CAPITAL|Budget Road Trips|Where to stay in Epernay

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We continue our three week Road Trip of France where we travel from Northern France stopping at St Omer, Vimy, Arras, Epernay, Eguisheim, Colmar, Jura Valley, Annecy at the foot of the Alps, we then travel back through central France via Avallon, Fontainebleau, Giveny and Touquet.

In this episode we visit EPERNAY the Champagne capital of France, the Museum of Wine, Champagne & Archaeology, we walk Champagne Avenue and drink Champagne for the first time at the A. Bergère Champagne house. We are travelling frugally and we show how you can have the champagne experience without spending lots of money.

We stay in the picturesque village of DAMERY only a 10 km/30 minute cycle along the river to from Epernay.

Link to museum, free entry on 1st Sunday of the month https://archeochampagne.epernay.fr/en/home/

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Join us as we continue our 3-w weekek French road trip from northern France to the Champagne and Als regions, Dura Valley to the foot of the Alps and then back through central France. Welcome back to the channel where we are on the road again. We have left Arass. And if you haven’t seen our previous episode, check it out where we visit the historical town of Aras and Vimeie and we visit the Canadian War Memorial and the World War I trenches and tunnels. Our next destination is Epony in the Champagne region. We were hoping to get in the town’s campsite, but unfortunately it’s fully booked. So our plans of not booking anything has crashed and burned already. Yeah. So we have plan B which is still to travel towards Epony and we will stay in a small town or village close by and hopefully somewhere we can cycle into Epony the next day. We have some ideas some options that we found and park for night. So we’ll be choosing one of those. So let’s get going and fingers crossed we’ll be lucky and we will definitely be having a glass of champagne in Epony tomorrow. The journey from Arash to Epony took around 4 hours and we traveled through a constant changing landscape. And as we got closer to our destination, we were surrounded by vines. We found somewhere to park. We are parked in Damarie 10 kilometers away from Epony. And I think we should be able to cycle there in 30 minutes tomorrow. So we’ll keep the van parked up here. This is a great option as a replacement to our campsite in Epony. The car park is run by the Marie the town council and it’s right next door to a lovely little park where the locals are playing balls on this Saturday afternoon. Seems to be a tradition for each place to have its own water tower and to have their name on the water tower itself. This your workout in the morning. You going to come over here down here opposite in the morning. If anyone remembers the saint, this to me looks like the character at the beginning. We have a sign here to Epony and points down what is the cycle track 9.4 km. So that is exactly what we want. So that’s tomorrow’s tomorrow’s ride. We think all of those guys dressed up and hooting are the harvesting teams. Yeah, just got the harvesting. I imagine when we when we drove in um we had three vans behind us and all the villages they went through, they were doing the hooting as well, but I don’t think they were as good as those guys cuz they’re all dressed up. And of course, if all the fields, all the the vines we pass, there’s loads and loads of harvesting going on. So, it’s obviously a big thing. Maybe cuz it’s Saturday night. Yeah, maybe. You know, it’s been a it’s been a week of harvesting and maybe tomorrow they get a break. Yeah. Ah, so good to see. Really excellent. So far, it’s a really nice flat cycle path. If it’s like this all the way, it’ll be brilliant. Heat. Heat. So, we’ve arrived in the center looking for somewhere to park our bikes. We didn’t have to go very far from the tourist information office and we found this park up on the resistance roundabout at the beginning of the Champagne Avenue. So, we’re all set to go. First stop, Champagne Museum. Yeah. Opens at 11:00 and on Sundays or the first Sunday of the month, it’s free. That’s our kind of place. Here we go. Champagne Avenue. So, we’ve uh found the museum. So we have our two free tickets. So, it seems to be a self-guided tour. She uh scanned our tickets and said, “Start in that room.” And this is the room we starting. And we’ve got a booklet that tell us everything we need to know. Got squeeze from the snow will come out here. And what do you reckon? Doesn’t smell like wine to me. 8 hours. Years. 8 years. So that’s what the wine or the champagne will smell like after 8 years. Oh my god. Smells like cheese. Oh god. My god. That’s disgusting. So what is that? It’s Chardonnay after six or four years. I’ll avoid that. We just discovered that you can lift that up to see what what it does smell like. And the one that we didn’t like. Is that it? Yeah. Which I think is more it was more cheesy to me. See if I can guess. Mushrooms. Mushrooms. Oh god. I promise I didn’t I promise I didn’t look now. So is this a body mine or is it a torch device? Both it looks like you could uh give someone extreme pain with that. So, the owner of this house was a wine merchant, and we’re talking 18th century. Um, and obviously maybe the 19th century as well, but clearly this is where he stored all of his stock. This is absolutely massive. I didn’t expect it to be so big. So, we thought good little museum. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s normally €10, but you’ve got not just the uh champagne history. You’ve got some archaeological stuff as well, the history of the area. And one thing I thought of on there when they were talking about champagne being used in celebration, I think that probably is the start of its success, the fact that people would celebrate famous events, the uh launches of ships and winning titles and things so people see it, don’t they? And want to want to have the same Yeah. want to have the same same thing for their celebration. And then it just sort of snowballs and spreads and then people have weddings and parties. After the museum, we walked the length of Champagne Avenue, which is about a mile with at least 20 champagne houses. We were looking for one where we could try a glass of champagne later. 6,930. It was Don Perinon who invented champagne in the 17th century. Before we go and drink some champagne, we thought we better line oursel up for lunch. And um the three on bacon, poached egg, cheese, avocado, holiday sauce. Looks amazing. And Martin has gone for egg, which is smoked salmon. We chose the Bour Champagne House for our afternoon drink. My champagne. Champagne is served. Madam original Brute apparently. Cheers. Cheers. Or is there some other term you use for drinking champagne? I don’t know. Nice. I mean, how much different it is to procco, I’m not sure, but very refreshing. But I’m the same. It’s got plenty of flavor, it has plenty of flavor, but procco is something we have at New Year’s and um I’ve only had a few pizza. Yeah. And to me, it smells and tastes quite similar. And and why wouldn’t it really? Yeah. I think if you’re a champagne connoisseur, you’ll probably tell me otherwise, but but it’s nice. And we went for the original brew which €8 a glass and they fill it up to here. So I think more than some of the other places were saying. A lot of places are advertising 10 c 10 liters. I’m sure that isensive. Yeah. Yeah. So I think this is good value. Yeah. Winston Churchill had a glass of champagne every morning at 11:00 a.m. A popped champagne cork can reach 24.8 mph. Marilyn Monroe had a bath containing 350 bottles of champagne. James Bond drank champagne 65 times in his novels. 3 million bottles of champagne are produced each year and the most expensive bottle produced so far is over $2 million. Epony is the champagne capital and it has half a million visitors every year and in the region there are 2,000 champagne houses. We’ve had a great time visiting Ebony and staying in Damry. And Damry was a lovely traditional village um set on a river surrounded by vineyards and we were quite lucky really considering that we wanted to stay at the campsite but the campsite is in Apne and we wouldn’t have seen this village and the other villages that we saw and the countryside if we stayed there and also with the bonus that it was free. So, thank you for watching and if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and we will see you on our travels in our next episode where we will be visiting Eglish and Com. So, we’ll see you then. Bye bye.