Month: September 2019

Our Airbnb in Les Bordes was an old village house, filled with hundreds of books (all in French, of course), and art, sculptures and textiles from all around the world. It was colourful and cluttered, cosy and comfortable, with a farmhouse kitchen and a huge garden with grapevines and fruit trees. The master bedroom, upstairs under the eaves, had a beam across the middle of the room at chest height, which was low enough that there was no risk to our heads, but we did have to duck under it to get to the bed. We had a cat who visited us most days and requested food, which our host had in the kitchen despite it not being his cat. We were quite happy to feed him though.

We decided to see a finished chateau as well, so we visited the chateau at Sully-sur-Loire, which was built beginning in the 14th century and has been added to, partially destroyed, and more recently restored. Joan of Arc and Voltaire both sought shelter here at times. Parts of the building are finished to illustrate the earlier history, and parts are much more ornate and lavish in the style of the 18th and 19th centuries. I find the earlier periods much more interesting.

During the week there were a few bike rides — Eric took Nate and Ben west along the bank of the Loire, but Tim and I stayed home because he wasn’t feeling great. A few days later we all went out eastwards along the river, with Nate on the tandem which meant we all went a good bit faster.

Tuesday was Eric’s birthday, so he went for a 60 mile ride alone and explored the region north of the river, stumbling on several chateaux along the way. We celebrated with Melon au Pineau (a specialty from the nearby Charente region which my family remembers from a visit when I was a teen!) and a lovely chocolate mousse cake.

Other points of interest… on the way home from our visit to Guédelon, we stopped at Briare, where a canal crosses over the Loire on a bridge. Kind of an interesting concept! We also drove right past a nuclear power plant, which was a bit weird. I’ve never seen cooling towers so close before! France gets about 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy at the moment, although it is working on reducing this. At the end of the week, we went for a walk in the Forêt d’Orléans. Not quite the sort of walk in the forest I’m used to — the paths were absolutely straight and geometric. A lot of it was closed to traffic due to fire risk as well, because it had been so hot and dry.

Les Bordes is a village on the outskirts of Sully-sur-Loire, a little east of Orléans. Our main purpose for staying here was to see Guédelon, which is essentially a medieval construction site. They’re building a 13th century castle, using only the materials, tools and methods that would have been available at the time. The project has been going on since 1997 and they expect to finish it in 2025.

We spent an entire day wandering around, watching and listening to the craftsmen and women. The boys were most interested in the blacksmith so we spent ages at the forge, and also spent a while watching the stonemasons dressing stones, but we also saw rope and tiles being made, logs being turned into beams with a special side-axe, fabric being dyed with local, plant-based dyes and many other types of work. A bit of a walk away from the main site we found the watermill which ground flour for the village.

Although they usually only offer English language tours in July and August, we were able to arrange one on the 1st September. It was a small group (just us, an English family with two boys, and an older German couple) and we learned a lot from our Dutch guide who spoke perfect (if accented) English and switched seamlessly to German when necessary. Because we were such a small group, all engaged and asking questions, and it was his last day before holidays, he spent a lot longer with us than I think he was supposed to!

Our first week was pure holiday. Riding, reading, pool time, and food — shopping for it, cooking it, eating it. And drinking wine, of course.

We stayed at a caravan site near Carnac in Brittany, with a large outdoor pool complex, as well as both covered and indoor pools, a zipline course, crazy golf, tennis courts and nightly entertainment, all onsite. There was even a circus the first couple of nights, and although we didn’t go to the show, Tim and Nate did take part in a circus skills workshop in the Big Top. Our caravan was quite new and very clean, with 3 bedrooms, a great covered deck and enough parking for the trailer and the car. We were close to the centre but set back off the road, and fairly private.

The pool was a few minutes’ walk away, so several times most days, the kids played in the water and Eric and/or I lay on a lounger in the sun reading. We did both get in a few times to cool off.

We ate bread and cheese, olives and tomatoes, ham and salami for lunch. We cooked meat on the BBQ for dinner, with lots of fresh veggies and salads, and then wandered down to the entertainment show as it was getting dark around 9:15. The kids were surprisingly interested in the shows, despite them being in French. I guess juggling, magic tricks, song and dance don’t need language. There was more interpretive dance than we’ve ever seen before!

We went for a family bike ride on Tuesday, with Nate on his own bike instead of the tandem (we weren’t going to go too far). We found bike paths, meandered into Carnac and along the coast a bit, made our way into Plouharnel to look for lunch, heading towards a pizza shop but were disappointed to find it was closed. However, around the corner we discovered a pizza vending machine(!) which actually looked pretty good. We were very brave and decided to try it. Our first order was goat cheese and honey, cooked in 3 minutes and served in a pizza box with a little wooden knife to cut it. It was really excellent, so we got a second one. Once fed, we kept riding, heading for the Quiberon peninsula. It was getting warmer but the road was flat and there were cycle paths or lanes. We made it more than halfway down the peninsula before we stopped again for ice cream in Saint-Pierre-Quiberon. By the time we turned around and rode back, we’d covered just about 50km!! Nate struggled at times, but for a 10 year old whose longest prior bike ride was 15 or 20km, he did amazingly well! It may have taken us 6 hours overall, and there *may* have been some whining and complaining, fighting and stressing along the way, but I think we were all pleased with ourselves afterwards.

I wanted to get out to visit some picturesque Brittany towns and I had read something about Pont-Aven, so without much further research (crappy internet), we headed there. It was an hour of driving for a town of art galleries and high-end tourist shops which is not really our thing, so that was a bit disappointing. And we couldn’t even find coffee!

However, Eric wanted to get out for a longer ride, so the next morning he headed out northwards on his bike. After a couple of hours, the kids and I drove up to Pontivy to meet him. He had a scenic and hilly 3+ hour ride and we had a lovely drive, and Pontivy was a much prettier medieval town than Pont-Aven.

The caravan site was opposite a field of ancient standing stones, the Alignements de Carnac. There are more than 3,000 of these megalithic stones in the area, standing in lines, erected more than 4,500 years ago. There are theories about why they’re there, but no absolutely certain explanations. It took us until Friday to decide to go on a tour and learn more about them, and after walking/cycling/driving past them several times over the week, it was interesting to walk around and in between them in the field. There are also dolmens and passage tombs in the area which have similar art and style to what we’ve seen in Newgrange and Knowth, and other megalithic sites near where we live in Ireland. Clearly the populations were related.

Another interesting connection to home was the Breton language on all the road signs (along with French, of course). It’s clearly in the same linguistic family as Irish Gaelic, although more closely related to Cornish and Welsh.

This was a week of relaxing and recovering from all the work of getting ready, and a great way to kick off our travels.