To market, to market.....

Thursday 26^th May

Finally, a quiet day.

Our first job for the day was to get fuel. We joined the queue at the supermarket and waited for half an hour; at least there was no limit on the amount of fuel. While waiting in the queue we noticed the laundromat next to the supermarket. Enterprising supermarkets – you can do your washing while you shop.

We had been in the queue nearly half an hour by the time we got this close - there were people directing traffic which made for a stress free wait.

I probably could have done my washing while I waited for fuel.

The market was on in the local town so we decided to visit there. It’s always interesting to see what is available in the fresh fruits and veggies. We bought some peaches and apricots – the peaches have a slightly different flavour to our yellow peaches but were tasty and juicy. They have another type of peach that looks like it has been squashed but we haven’t tried those yet.  There was a stall selling seafood and oysters, again 4.50euro for 1 kg (10) – these were slightly bigger than those we bought the other day and Rob said they were nicer. They also had crabs for sale for 7euro 1kg. Not sure how much one crab would weigh but we are going to buy one next time we see them and try it. The other thing we bought was paella for dinner – 6euro for a tub, probably a bit bigger than the standard takeaway size. There was plenty there for both of us with mussels, prawns, calamari, spicy sausage and chicken. Very nice!

A few shots of the market.

This stall was selling sewing bits and pieces but nothing I was after.

We finished at the market just in time to go to the local relais for lunch. We entered through the wrong door which meant we didn’t see the menu for choice for main course so it was a bit of a guess when it came to ordering. We had noticed the sign – Thursday cous-cous – but thinking this was just cous-cous we assumed when she asked what we wanted that it was ham and cous-cous or fish and cous-cous. We ordered ham which turned out to be pork, and no cous-cous. We asked here at the gite and apparently cous-cous is a bit of a speciality of Brittany and consists of sausage, chicken, beef, vegetables with cous-cous. We’ll have to try it before we leave Brittany.

A bit about the area – it seems to be mostly dairy farming and crops. I’m not too sure what all the crops are but there is certainly wheat in there. The cows here look pretty comfortable – up to their armpits in green grass. Certainly a change in colour of scenery from Shepparton at the moment though I guess that is changing at home. This area does not seem to have the really tightly packed villages that we saw in the east of France and a lot more newer houses. We wonder if this is due to the fact that this area was bombed to smithereens during WWII. Most of the houses appear to be at least 2 storeys – not sure why this is. The roads here are great. Even the small country roads are bitumen. We did find one short dirt road when we asked Dora to find the shortest route after we found a road we wanted to use had been blocked. Dora has been brilliant. We have hardly heard her ‘do a u-turn as soon as possible’. She very quickly finds an alternative.

Tomorrow we plan to head to the north coast – not Mont St Michel but further west.