This was Tuesday Sept 1, 2015 - the Smelly part
The farms all around us have started spreading manure on the fields. The air is ripe with the smell and it waters the eyes sometimes and really twitches the old head to be driving along and suddenly smell one of the fields. OMG. We are passing many of the manure trucks as they move from field to field. OH, lucky us. All the fields are harvested now except the corn.
Off to Redon today to see the abbey. Find our way there by again putting in the tourist office address but as we drive into town, we see the abbey and find parking right off the street. We are across the train tracks from the abbey. Hop out and take a few photos and then to the tourist office which is closed for lunch
. Once again we have gotten here just at the magical closing hours of noon to 2 or later. The streets are pretty deserted.
Walk under the tracks and to the abbey and inside for a good look around by ourselves. Often we have been the only people in the churches or at the dolmens. It must still be vacation time for French people so they are all gone OR the kids are just back in school. At any rate, kind of eerie to be in small towns that look like they are totally deserted. We might see one or two people on the street and a few cars and that's about it.
We walk around to the back for a view of the flying buttresses and then walk into town to see if we can find a place to eat. We don’t. my gosh. There is a high street with everything closed. There are a couple of bars open but only serving sandwiches. We walk to the river or canal and it is quite pretty with a couple of locks off of it but nothing to eat. So I get irritated and we leave and drive to La Guerche de Bretagne.
Find a place to park. It was a market there this morning but the market is closing up and people leaving. There are a couple of restaurants open. One has a lot of people sitting at a table outside without food so we choose the one next to it. We are seating inside and the daily menu is buffet starter and then a main and then dessert. We skip the starter and both of us get pork chops which a man standing next to us at an open fire grill cooks our chops. It is quite good. I have the Brittany cake with prunes for dessert. I have two pieces so I take one home with us. We are there late enough that the staff goes to get their plates and are all sitting at a table eating when we pay and leave
. A French gentleman across from us has an aperitif which is a standard thing we have been offered but have turned down each time. It’s alcohol of some sort and is brought in a small wine glass with the alcohol to a line then the consumer fills up the glass from a carafe of water that comes with it.
Our lunch was at Les Merchands. Quite tasty.
There are some of the old timber houses in town. They are supposedly a big deal in Brittany. They are all old and not very straight anymore – leaning towards one side or the other.
We decide we can push on to Vitre which has an old castle/fortress. Vitre looks like it has other stuff of interest as well but we are lucky enough to find parking directly across from the castle – bet we can’t do that in high season. We’ve found parking everywhere we go so far. Am sure we wouldn’t be near so lucky in high season.
The chateau de Vitre has several tours and a small museum in the rooms and some ramparts and good views back towards the town and the church of Notre dame in the town
. Seems like a good many of these towns have churches or cathedrals de Notre dame in them.
We pay to get in and we get a map in English which we are asked to return. We go up the first tower and stop in the rooms for a look at the bedroom and just items from the era. Up to the next floor and then across the ramparts to a chapel and to a guard tower in the middle. Back to the first tower and then up two more floors on a spiral staircase. More displays of the time and era but nothing spectacular. Good views out the windows though.
Back down to the courtyard. The house of the duke which was inside the fortress is gone. There is something on the far side called the Hotel de Vitre but we figure out that means it is like a city hall where you come for your wedding license and things such as that. We don’t go up the stairs there because have no reason to get anything like that.
Head out of town through some quite narrow streets and one ways and on to La Roche aux Fees which is supposedly a very large dolmen with 4chambered rooms.
Our GPS takes us into the town and around the church at the center and says we are there but we had seen a sign that said to La Roche aux Fees and had a brown historic symbol on it so we started following it instead and managed to find the dolmen
. It had a visitors building which was closed when we got there. Dang. Was worried that we missed it and the dolmen was inside but we went around the building and followed the path and found it.
It was quite large and long for a dolmen. We were the only ones there. Don’t know how they could tell it had 4 rooms because it’s just a long row of side stones on both sides covered with the top stones. Hubby ducked to go into the entrance but I went in on one of the sides where a stone was knocked over. Very nice. Walked back to the parking lot via the other path and there was a large stone sitting by a picnic table that had carvings on it similar to what we have seen in other dolmens.
Then to home. As we are driving down one of the smaller roads, really close to the house where the roads are very small, we are clipped on the left side and our mirror is left dangling in 3 pieces. I pull over and hubby gets out and bangs it back into shape. Nothing was broken mechanically as I could move it by the automatic mover from the driver’s side. The car that clunked us was sitting down the road and hubby waved to them and they went on. Had to have done the same to their mirror I would think. Hubby’s take is that I was over the line. My take is that I wasn’t and they were over the line as I have watched many of the cars come over the line while driving towards me. The times we have stopped to see where I am on the road, I am inside my lane. But this is where we always disagree. And now at last, he might have ammunition on his side. Oh well. I'll never be convinced I was over the line. When we get home, we look at the mirror again and it isn’t quite put together so I hit it and that seems to knock it back in place. And the turn signal on it is still working.
We try to look at stars but it is now too smelly and chilly to be outside for long and also can’t see too many. Going to end up being another holiday where the star gazing should be terrific but won't be for one reason or another.
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