It's like crossing a border.
See a farmer on his tractor watering an immense field, and a hundred meters further, discover the “Loiret” sign: farewell Essonne and Île-de-France.
We came to see a very small river which gives its name to a very large department, and here we are on a limestone plateau as far as the eye can see, with its fields of rapeseed glowing yellow in spring.
In the plain, you don't meet anyone on foot, but in the car, it's as beautiful as a western to take these endless little straight roads where it is difficult to cross.
Every now and then an isolated farm, like a ranch.
To (re) find the GR32, which goes from the Seine valley to the Loire valley, and can even lead hikers to Santiago de Compostela, you have to leave the plateau, find the villages, see the steeples, descend.
In Ondreville-sur-Essonne, by the river, it is not uncommon to come across a few tractors.
LP / Jean-Baptiste Quentin
And in the middle flows a river… The expression is literally correct: "In the middle of the plateau, the river is an oasis which breaks the monotony of the landscape, like a bleeding or a green flow", explains Emmanuel Camplo, who manages the associative union. protecting the or rather the watercourses: the Essonne is born here from two rivers with the appearance of discreet streams of water, the Egg and the Rimarde.
Intertwined streams
Egg would come from "Eff", at the time when "f" and "s" were spelled almost the same, hence the Essonne. In Estouy, where the hiking trail finally follows the water - because the marshes very often keep it away from it and we rather encourage car jumps and strolls on the banks, which are not public everywhere - Emmanuel Camplo, who speaks to us in a concert of croaking frogs in full reproduction, in front of the Moulin de la Porte which houses the SMORE (Joint Union of Egg, Rimarde and Essonne), has reconstituted a marsh labeled Espace natural sensitive since the end of 2018.
In his meeting room is a bat.
Please do not disturb her, the window remains open so that this solitary can find her colony.
A stork was seen the day before.
Do not hurry, stay on the lookout.
The Essonne valley, the border between Beauce and Gâtinais, is one of the two major migratory corridors in the region with that of the Loing.
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We advance, rather by car, even if there are many paths, because the very birth of the Essonne from its two tributaries is geographically located on the lands of Prince Murat, descendant of the Napoleonic hero, whose castle we have seen since the road to Aulnay-la-Rivière.
This generic name says well how difficult it is to distinguish these intertwined streams.
We finally go down to see the Essonne and its old wash houses.
We made a world of it, having grown up in the department.
Here it is in a miniature green Amazon, which will flow into the Seine from Corbeil-Essonnes.
A little turn, a few loops and then go.
But suddenly, the magic of old stones or rather old wood that speaks.
Another mill, that of Châtillon, remained in its own juice since the departure of the last miller in 1959. Upstairs, its unmade bed gives the impression that it has just stood up.
Next to the tub, the ancestor of the tub, and a sewing machine that has not moved, to sew the sacks of flour.
Suddenly thrown into a past that seems to breathe.
"There is a mill every kilometer"
Asamec, an association for the protection and friends of the Chatillon water mill, dreams of turning it into a bread museum.
"There is none in France," says Gérard Viron, secretary of the association, who shows the mill a few times a year, and by appointment.
Restoration work is in progress.
The wheel turns, a fantastic, gigantic mechanism in this pocket handkerchief from the river.
“There is a mill every kilometer along the Essonne.
It is the last with an operational wheel.
The idea is to make flour, to animate it.
We produce bread for local festivals, we have an old-fashioned oven, everything works, ”smiles the latter.
The association of safeguard and of the friends of the water mill of Chatillon dreams of turning it into a bread museum.
LP / Jean-Baptiste Quentin
The mayor of Ondreville, the town of the mill, also passes.
They have bright eyes, happy to have saved the building with the means at hand, a carpenter on the team, and some helpers.
A rural heritage as fragile as it is precious.
Essonne hides itself, but when you tame it, it awakens the memory.
Miller you sleep, your mill will come back to life.
Information from Grand Pithiverais Tourisme:
www.grandpithiverais.fr
.
SMORE events, smoe@orange.fr.
Moulin de Châtillon:
asamec.wordpress.com
WE DISCOVER… the printing museum, from Gutenberg to “Salut les Copains”
In Malesherbes, a visit to the Printing Workshop-Museum is a must.
LP / Jean-Baptiste Quentin
Malesherbes, 1.5 km from Essonne, at the end of the RER D. The town owes its name to the king's first major bookseller, a free spirit who supported both Diderot and D'Alembert for their iconoclastic encyclopedia, and Louis XVI during his trial.
This earned Malesherbes to be guillotined in turn.
On these lands of letters are also the Maury printing works, which donated one of their warehouses for the creation of the Printing Workshop-Museum (AMI), an associative place opened in October 2018. About 150 machines are exhibited there, some of which work, from Gutenberg - the only one that has been redone identically, everything else is original - up to contemporary printing.
Read also Tour du Grand Paris on foot, stage 25: the art of getting lost from Malesherbes to Maisse
We discover one of the five original presses of Balzac, he who was a printer for two years and went bankrupt, nicknamed himself "the man of letters of lead", and the appearance of the first keyboards at the end of the 19th century. century. "The French press was the first in the world with the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, the newspapers had four or five editions per day", recalls Jean-Marc Providence, designer of this very well designed museum, which mixes machines, history printing and press, old books, original editions of the first dictionaries, old issues of "Pif gadget" or "Salut les copains".
Currently, the exhibition "Le temps des vinyls", with its covers, its Johnny or Mike Brant stage costumes, its jukeboxes that you can run with yéyé tubes, really make you want to come, at the end of Île-de-France and even a little after.
The Printing Workshop-Museum,
in Malesherbes (Loiret).
WE MEET ... the patron of the most beautiful villages in France
In Yèvres-le-Châtel, classified among the most beautiful villages in France, the deputy mayor, Alain Di Stefano, watches over the old stones.
LP / Jean-Baptiste Quentin
Yèvre-le-Châtel, 90 km from Paris, is dominated by its medieval fortress and its church eaten up by grass and the sky, curiously never completed (
Editor's note: because the kingdom no longer needed to defend itself against Burgundy and the building of a second church was no longer necessary
). With its restored and flowery alleys, it owes a lot to a man, Alain Di Stefano, deputy mayor of the village, president of various associations including that of the most beautiful villages in France, of which his is a member. “Here stood the seat of royal justice,” he says proudly. This village of 231 inhabitants is crossed by the Rimarde, the river which will give birth to Essonne.
The old military fortress now defends only its rose gardens and its romantic cemetery, an ode to strolling. "I thought that this village could find a second wind, eight centuries later," explains this tireless pilgrim, Parisian, who pampers his adopted village which was once abandoned. All the lower walls are vegetated there. "I went door to door to reopen the alleys, formerly cluttered with waste and trash cans", confides the city councilor who convinced each inhabitant to follow him to restore its glory to "the last rocky promontory before the Beauce plain ".
This lover of hamlets and villages takes his role of justice of the peace of the most beautiful villages in France with the greatest seriousness: "We have downgraded as much as we have classified", with a greedy smile the intractable magistrate.
Yèvre-le-Châtel is not at risk of letting go, Alain Di Stephano could not stand it.
And he is quite right, as these old flowering stones give the feeling of smelling a medieval past.
Information: the Compagnons de la Châtellenie at the email address yevre.chatellenie45@gmail.com
WE ENJOY IT for ...
… Savor a Pithiviers.
Some compare the pithiviers, the local cake which even has its brotherhoods, to the galette des rois. Crime of lese-majesté. Pithiviers are much lighter whether it's iced - our favorite, but the topping has to be perfect for the contrasting taste - or not. It is savored all year round in the Loiret where it remains an institution. Purists argue that its “real” version is not flaky, but melting. Its origins go back to the Romans, who made pancakes, when Pithiviers was a place of trade. This mixture of sugar, butter, eggs and almond powder, in equal quantities as for the pound cake, according to a great master, should not give any feeling of heaviness or dryness.The tour de force of an old pastry which would seem filling but must have the light grace of a dessert.
… The route of the rose.
In the Loiret, the rose is a science, the flowering of which is admired from May to September. A circuit has been designed around 16 parks, gardens and producers, from La Neuville-sur-Essonne, where this river takes its source, to Meung-sur-Loire. A road that passes through castles like that of Bussière, near Briare, or in Orléans Saint-Jean-Le Blanc. We follow the water, in order or disorder, from the canals of the Loing, Orleans and Briare, to the Loire itself.
Information:
www.routedelarose.fr.