Friday 18th Sept

Walls of Chateau Fougeres

The interior of st Sulpice church Fougeres

We pedaled most of the day, 35 miles in all which doesn’t sound a lot but with the extra bags is quite hard work. My name will be changed to ‘moaner’ by Alec shortly, as I am very bad at thinking positive whilst puffing and pushing up hills. Not that they were very steep. The first major mistake was not bothering to buy some lunch whilst in Pontorson, as when we next thought about some refreshment, everything was ‘fermee’d for several hours. A great worry to me! Fortunately we found a village further on and ate large baguettes on a bench in the town centre. My daily 10 minute siesta/power nap is proving tricky, but so far have managed to find a quiet spot, either on a beach, bench or patch of grass. The countryside has changed to being very rural. Seemingly small farms with a mix of maize, huge fields of carrots and onions and some beautiful Brittany cattle. The houses are very similar to the old Guernsey farmhouses with lovely old granite and mostly beautifully kept up with bright blue shutters. Tourism is huge in this area, I think.
The Lanterne B and B in Fougere is right in the centre of the old city at the base of the Chateau walls so very well situated for wandering around. It has a bohemian air with little furniture, but tables etc made of empty boxes. Very comfortable and generous hosts who let us use their computer for ages trying to book the next stop.
We shall have to take up reading the local papers as we planned to go on to Vitre en route to Rennes. We had no idea that the entire farming fraternity had the same idea for a ‘manifestation of farmers’ (not sure what they do at that) so we were unable to find anywhere to stay. It has been a good thing as we had a marvelous day looking around Fougeres properly. It is quite beautiful , mostly built around the Chateau constructed in the 11th century. Huge Norman ramparts with some additions from 14-1500s. It is the largest Norman Castle in Europe.
Finally we found a cafe with wifi (pronounced 'wee fee' whilst speaking in French and probably Scottish!) so spent a long time catching up. We can manage day to day French but need to learn much more vocab, particularly in the tech side of life, as we struggled to communicate in the Orange phone shop, buying a sim card for the local calls. Goodness knows what we have ended up with but it seems to work.
Tomorrow we set off for Vitre. Everyone so far has been amazingly helpful and friendly.
Friday 18th. We had a very easy ride along country roads and we are now in dairy country. Cows everywhere and also many signs complaining about ‘greve de lait’. The farmers here seem to have the same problems as the U.K. ones. ’It is very refreshing, not a Tesco in sight and mostly small supermarkets or stalls in the villages. At the first village today we found a man barbequeing saussisons outside, helped by his son wrapping them in gallettes for us, inside. Both very talkative and we understood at least one word in 10. There are not very many birds around except for fields of Plovers and a few Fieldfares coming in too. The leaves are beginning to fall so it is pretty much like home. We ate our picnic on the edge of a field just before entering Vitre.
We are staying in a beautiful old town house belonging to Mme Faucher just outside the city walls. She is so charming and we have booked in tomorrow night as well. We want to look at Rennes which is 25 minutes by train but apparently a bit of a nightmare bike ride, so we will have a day off and take the train.
Vitre is ancient, cobbled, quaint, clean, has an impressive chateau, AND a centre of the protestants in France so we may even get to a service. Alec is happy as there is a lot of gilding to look at in the churches.