Parking in Cluny

Parking in Cluny is a tricky business. They introduced desperately needed new parking areas during 2010 to cater for the expected rise in tourists and then promptly removed them, recovered them or turned them into paid parking as soon as the event was over. The staff of ENSAM (the Grand Ecole for engineers) have taken over about 150 new spaces from April to the end of August while their own car park is being repaired, paid parking has been introduced in the car park where we normally park on a Saturday, the old car park near the Equivallée has been turned into a bus area and the “brand new” car park near the bus area is nothing more than an old car park with new markings and fewer spaces. In total about 250 parking spaces have been lost since the new year and 60 previously free spaces have become paid parking.

So last Saturday when we arrived to go to the now much bigger summer market and a horse championship was in full flight as well as the ENSAM students still in residence (plus the fact that the place was heaving with tourists) there was nowhere to park at all. As we were waiting for a bus to get out of the way (he couldn’t find a space either) we saw someone nip out of a space, in we went. Phew, that’s that sorted. OK yes I knew it was a bus space but all’s fair in love and parking. Well no it isn’t actually, when we had been to the market we returned to find the road cordoned off by the police who were ticketing everyone who had had the audacity to think they could park in these spaces which used to be car spaces but had now been confiscated by the buses. Blocked in at one end by the police and the other end by a bus, we had no escape. In any case we now know how to pay a parking fine.

So just a little word of warning about parking if you go into Cluny, if there is a big sign saying buses only it will cost you 11 Euros the first time you park there, it will cost 35 Euros the second time, 68 Euros for the third offence and 195 Euros for a fourth, that makes 20c an hour for paid parking sound rather cheap.

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