Musée du Vélo Michel Grézaud

What you will see

Some 600 square metres over three rooms follow the bicycle from the draisine of 1818 to the first chain-driven bikes, tricycles, tandems and children's bikes. Look for the strangest pieces: the lévocyclette, pedalled up and down like a sewing machine, a bike with the biggest gear in the world, one with a built-in pump and one you pedal with your arms. Working bikes of every kind, from the milkman's tricycle to the tandem of the first paid holidays, show cycling in everyday life. Before you leave, you can try a high-wheeler or a kangaroo bike.

History

Michel Grézaud, a butcher in Tournus, started in the 1950s, at the age of 20, by restoring the local milkman's old delivery tricycle and then a high-wheeler found in the family attic. For decades he tracked down rusty wrecks, searching local papers for closing cycle shops and old sketches, until he had nearly 200 bicycles and more than 7,000 parts and objects. At 56 he closed his butcher's shop and, with his wife Josette, opened a bicycle museum at Cormatin, which ran from 1997 to 2007.

When it had to close for lack of local support, the bicycles spent three years in his garage. In 2009 the town of Tournus and an association of cycling enthusiasts found them a new home in the former Féculerie, the old starch factory, and the museum reopened there in June 2010. Michel Grézaud died suddenly before he could see this new start, and the museum now bears his name.