Not on APT but what a gem!

Friday 27^th May

We awoke this morning to fog but by the time we were ready to go out it had lifted.

First stop was the 11^th century medieval village of Moncontour. As we neared the village the fog came down again and it was quite cool. This was a real gem to visit. We picked up a walking map at the tourist office and set off to explore. There was a lot of up and down hill on the walk. Most of the houses are from the 16^th to 18^th centuries. I loved the signs hanging to advertise the businesses. We had morning tea here – yummy pastries. By the time we finished our walk the fog had lifted again.

 

One of the streets in the beautiful village of Moncontour.

A few more shots of the village.

Just a few of the business shingles. 

Sorry - no dogs today. How about a goat?

Part of the fortified walls of Moncontour.

Moving on we headed for Quintin, another village from the 17^th and 18^th centuries. It was lunchtime so we decided to look for a relais along the route where we would stop for lunch. Bingo! Just look for the place where all the tradies vans are parked between 12 and 2 and that is where you will get a good feed. Today we had the buffet salads and cold selections, followed by boeuf bourguignon, cheese, dessert, coffee and the bottle of red of course. We’ve finally got this lunch thing all sorted and feel quite confident turning up at these places. Yesterday there were quite a lot of women at the relais we went to, but today you could count the women on one hand.

Quintin’s main attraction would be the 17^th century chateau which is still lived in and has been in the same family since the 1400s. We had a tour of the chateau but probably missed a lot of the information as the tour was in French and we just had a printed booklet to tell us about the main points. The chateau has an amazing collection of porcelain, china, glassware and silver. Some beautiful pieces - too nice to eat off. Quintin village was famous for linen manufacture in 17^th and 18^th centuries and has a lot of half timbered houses in the main streets. We were looking for the museum of linen manufacturing but this turned out to be a bit if a dud.

The chateau in Quintin. See how blue the sky was after the fog lifted.

A view of the basilica in Quintin as seen from behind the chateau. 

It was getting late in the day but having come this far we decided to keep heading north to the coast. We stopped near the village of Plerin on the Baie de Saint-Brieuc. This bay has the worlds fifth highest tidal amplitude. We only had a quick look at one of the port areas as most of the attractions seemed to be further away than we wanted to go for the day. Time to head for home.

The Baie de Saint-Brieuc as seen from Plerin.

This is just some of the houses along the river. There were some really lovely looking homes.

Lots of yachts in the port.

So what else did we find of interest today? A poster in the village of Moncontour advertising a hillclimb this weekend - 3.2k long. So, tomorrow we are off to the hillclimb. We found a newspaper in the bar talking about the hillclimb and mentioned that there would be quite a few English and Irish ‘pilotes’ (drivers) there so Rob should be able to find someone to talk to. I have my sewing and a book so should be able to amuse myself.

The couple in the gite next door are from England and when we got home yesterday it was so hot she was sunbathing and had been in the pool. It was at least 15deg. Today it was 23 so she was probably stripped right down – glad we were out.

We went to a different supermarket on the way home tonight. It is probably the French equivalent to Aldi. Everything seems so cheap, and not just at ‘aldi’. We bought a quiche, 1kg kiwi fruit, 2 tomatoes, and 3 bottles of wine and it cost us 8.50euro. 

Can't vouch for the quality of the wines, but look at the prices. Rob has been drinking mostly the house reds and so far he hasn't struck a dud.

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.

Canals and Cars

Wednesday 25^th May

We had planned to have a shorter day today but that’s not how it turned out. We first headed to the medieval village of Malestroit which is on the canal that runs from Nantes to Brest. We visited the tourism office and picked up a map for a walking tour of the village. This village had beautiful medieval buildings and was a walk with lots to see along the way. We watched a couple of boats on the canal – the centre of the village is only 100m or so from the canal and the boats tie up and the people walk into the town for lunch.

The village of Malestroit

Love the angles on this building.

The main square of Malestroit

Stone carvings above a renaissance doorway. 

Changes a boring planter box into something interesting to look at.

A canal boat at Malestroit - this is the main canal from Nantes to Brest that we saw 2 days ago in Josselin. 

From Malestroit we moved on to Redon which is the centre for hiring the canal boats – maybe one day we will try this though we have already visited a few of the villages along the route. We arrived in Redon at 12 which is school knock-off time and lunch time for businesses and the traffic was awful. Just one lane of traffic (with lots of school buses) trying to work its way through the city centre. We found a park right near the main city street (still not 100% sure on some of the parking signs but we didn’t get booked) and had lunch. Apart from walking the main street and a drive along the canal we didn’t do anything else in Redon as we would be wasting valuable time that could be spent at the car museum.

More of the canal - now we are in the town of Redon where a lot of the canal boat cruises start.

The town of Redon - Hotel Ville.

Canal at Redon.

The car museum is at a village called Loheac and Rob says it is probably the best one he has seen apart from the Le Mans museum which focuses only on the Le Mans race. There are over 400 restored cars at the museum and thousands of model cars as well. Apparently over 90% of the cars are owned by one person - lamborghinis, ferraris, maseratis ; yes more than one of each. It seemed like as you finished visiting one area you turned a corner and there was another room of cars. There was one room that had about 12 formula 1 cars. Rob was in heaven. I did one loop of the whole museum and then left Rob to wander and do another loop. We have lots of photos but I’ll spare you and only post a few here. There is also a circuit here - Rob says it is small and narrow. There were a few people there with their cars having a run. There is some sort of race meeting there in a week or so.

We are now at the car museum at Loheac. The guard dog is looking after things.

Rob says it is probably one of the best car museums he has been to apart from the Le Mans museum which focuses only on Le Mans. This one seems to have everything.

A hall of formula 1 cars.

Familiar looking car from many of the old WWII movies. 

Rob liked the Group B rally cars - and could have sat for hours and watched the video they had running.

We have lots more car photos - but I've only included a taste.

Our last stop for the day was to the forest of Broceliande-Paimpont. This is where the legend of King Arthur is said to have happened. It was late when we arrived and the tourist office was closed so we weren’t able to find out what to do here. We may go back but will see what the next couple of days bring.

 

A lovely looking house near the forest.

Dinner in – just sausages and leftovers.

Go west young man...

Tuesday 24^th May

Today we decided to visit the city of Quimper and then the furthest point west in France – Pointe du Raz. We took the back roads to Quimper and passed through some lovely little villages. It took quite a while to travel the 140k because of the number of villages along the road which require a speed limit of 70 or 50.

Quimper is a really lovely city with a large pedestrian area. In a lot of places the old fortification walls are still standing and inside the walls are many medieval buildings. We took a ride on the little train which gave us a quick overview of the buildings and the history of Quimper. The cathedral (yes, another church) was interesting in that the nave (main part) of the church had a bend about half way down. No one is really sure why this is. It looks quite strange when you stand in the doorway and look down the aisle.

The cathedral at Quimper.

You can see the bend in the church in this photo.

Part of the walls of the city.

One of the maze of streets in the pedestrian only section of the city.

Was an interesting curve in the roof of the building above the white umbrella.

We found this amazing chocolate shop with these fantastic chocolates - the whole thing is edible. We resisted the urge to buy one of these special pieces and bought just a few pieces of nougat.

Ceramic and porcelain painting seems to be the art form of this part of France. Not sure that these plates come up clearly in this photo.

More of the city walls and a watchtower.

I found a wool and fabric shop and this was the decoration on the footpath out the front. Didn't buy anything.

From Quimper we drove out to Pointe du Raz. A slow drive following lots of cars – a bit like a drive down to Ocean Grove I guess. You park at the end and then walk (through the touristy shops) out to the point. The weather was OK but it was a bit cool and breezy out at the point.

The town of Audierne as we drove to Pointe du Raz. Had a lovely little harbour but we couldn't get a photo as we just drove through.

The lighthouse of Pointe du Raz.

A  WWII bunker at Pointe du Raz.

After this we pointed the car towards home via the lesser roads and via Pontivy for tea. Last time we were in France we discovered Chinese buffet restaurants where they have plenty of dishes on the buffet but also you can pick your fresh ingredients and have them cooked with the sauce of your choice. I had satay chicken and garlic prawns. Rob had a mix of meats with garlic sauce and then seafood with Thai curry sauce. We both left there feeling that we’d eaten one dish too many.

We are finding it hard to adjust to the daylight here. It seems to get light by 6 and it is still light at 10pm. We feel like we need to at least stay up until it gets dark. Even when I get up in the middle of the night it doesn't seem to be really dark.