9/14/17
Our trip is winding down. We will return to Delft, Netherlands and stay for several days. We want to mail home a box of incidentals that, if we bring on the plane, will put us over our baggage limit. Delft ought to be the best place to accomplish that.
The weather has turned towards fall with cooler, wetter weather. Kinda like when we arrived.
We spent 6 days in Delft, wandering the town, enjoying fresh herring and kibblings (deep fried cod) for lunches and accomplishing our task to mail home a box of “stuff.” Next on our itinerary is Utrecht where we will pick up our luggage bags then Edam (more cheese!), Voledam (more herring!), Amsterdam (more everything!) and finally, after we return the Hymer to Utrecht, our last night will be spent in a hotel near the airport before our flight home.
Thirteen nights remain before departure and we have a lot of bittersweet thoughts as we wrap things up. A part of us is very ready to come home but another part already misses the Europe we didn’t see this time. We planned to visit the Mediterranean countries in the second half of a projected year-long trip. Our decision to return home has forfeited those countries. Croatia and Portugal would have been new territory for us, while southern France, Italy and Spain are well loved and will be missed. These are good reasons for a return visit someday.

Here are some travel statistics for you:
• Five months, 1 week on the road.
• 62 campgrounds in eight countries.
• 4719 miles/7595km
• 20 fuel fill-ups.
• 223 gallons/847 liters diesel totaling $1,106.00US
• Average mpg/km/l – 22.7/9.6
• Average price per gallon: $4.95US
We lost count of the number of croissants and pain au chocolate consumed (although our waistlines didn’t).
Pepsi, Riesling wines and sparkling waters were the beverages of choice (guess who preferred which).
Brie cheese, sliced ham and tomatoes, mayo and mustard on French baguettes was a favorite lunch.
We cooked nearly all our dinners and ate quite well.
Lidl, once our favorite grocery store, was replaced by any of the great supermarket chains: Carrefour and Auchan in France, Sainsbury and Tesco in the UK, Albert Hein and Nettorama discount in Netherlands, Dehaize in Belgium & Luxembourg. Surprisingly, we came across few farmers markets, although they are still a weekly institution in the towns and cities we visited, we just hit the wrong days.
Our bicycles were a good investment, although we were terrified to ride them in the UK with its small roads and no bike lanes. But Holland… in Holland bikes are king. They have their own lanes, their own traffic lights and cars and pedestrians must yield to their presence. The confidence these Dutch riders have is astounding and we wish we had half of it. They are like herd animals, riding the streets by the hundreds. If urban United States respected bicyclists half as much as the Netherlands do, much of our traffic congestion would be greatly lessened and we would be healthier for it.

9/22/17 – Utrecht
We returned to our very first ever campground. Once known as Camping Buerenkil, it closed down sometime after our first trip but has reopened as Budget Camping Utrecht. It is in the middle of a massive renovation project and is hardly recognizable. The old shower block and restaurant are gone, soon to be replaced. A temporary shower block is in place and while smaller, is in much better shape than the old one. There are plans for 80 cabin rentals. Budget camping Utrecht’s advantage is proximity to town center – about a 10 minute bike ride.

We stayed for two nights and rode our bikes into Utrecht each day. On the second day we went to Donna’ place to collect our rolling duffle bags. We have see Dutch bike riders carrying 6-ft ladders, 2×4 wooden studs and furniture dollies. We strapped our duffle bags to the back of the bike racks and returned to the camping feeling like we belonged!

As we took our bikes from the camping to Donna’s house we rode through the university district and found a whole area of Utrecht we hadn’t discovered on our previous visits. All in all, we found in Utrecht a city that would be a pleasure to live in; not too big and with all the culture and excitement of university towns.

We still had about 10 days left so we spent three of them in a return visit to Edam/Volendam. Fourteen miles north of Amsterdam, it rests on the Markermeer, the southern portion of the former Zuiderzee, Holland’s great shallow bay of the North Sea. In the early 20th century, after a ruinous flood, a long dike was erected, closing off the Zuiderzee from the North Sea and creating 2 lakes; the IJsselmeer and Markermeer.

We were able to easily ride our bicycles between Edam and Volendam as well as use them to explore the two towns.
Volendam Harbor is a popular tourist attraction. That means the harbor front is loaded with kitschy souvenir shops and hundreds and hundreds of visitors from all over the world clogging the quay. It’s funny that one street off the harbor front, the town is as quiet and peaceful and charming as can be. Few tourists venture off the quay, I’m sure much to the relief of the locals. It appeared that in this little town the locals could have their cake and eat it too: rake in the tourist monies and yet, one street away, retain their lifestyle and their sanity.

Edam, slightly inland from the sea, is where Edam cheese originates and the town has several tempting cheese shops. In the 1500s Edam was granted the right to have a weekly market that developed into a cheese market. Farmers brought in their cheeses into town by boat where the cheeses were tested for quality and selling prices haggled over. Then the cheese rounds were stored in a great warehouse until they had aged to perfection.

The old city center is protected by the government for its main structures and architectural details. Several historical buildings remain: St. Nicolas church, a massive brick structure built on pilings to counter sinking from the weight of the building materials; the Town Hall, still actively used for marriage ceremonies; the Edam Museum, oldest brick house in the town (1530); the Carillon, the bell tower of a church demolished in 1800s. The bells, made in 1566, are outside the lantern and still ring out a short melody every 15 minutes.

We found the Cheese Market. We learned that 85% of Edam cheese is sold to tourists and exported to other countries, that the Dutch much prefer Gouda cheese over Edam because Gouda can be flavored with herbs and spices.

Edam was full of charming streets, canals and houses.

Our camping was right on the Markermeer:

Next stop: Amsterdam

9/11/17 – Laon, France

Based on the photo on a Carrefour shopping bag, we decided to visit the French town of Laon, about 85 miles NE of Paris. It was our last stop in France as we headed to the Netherlands in preparation for our return home. Laon has an early Gothic cathedral, and evidently we haven’t had our fill of cathedrals yet.
The land north of Paris, the Picardy region, was made up of flat plains and gentle rolling hills used as farmland. On our way we passed the small city of Soisson whose name is of Celtic origin and was conquered by Julius Caesar. It had a great looking dual-spired church that caught our eye (but not our camera).
Laon sits atop a high steep hump of limestone some 330 feet above the surrounding plains. Because of that height, it has been a strategic location since long before Roman times. After Christianity arrived in the 4th century the town gained prominence when an archbishop from Laon baptised Clovis I as the first Christian Frankish king.
The city and surrounding area played a part in the history of the Merovingian, Carolingian, Capetian and Bourbon royal dynasties (kings & queens from all those dynasties are buried in St. Denis). A courtyard called the Dauphine Courtyard once belonged to an inn where King Louis XIII and his queen stayed and where it is suspected that the Sun King – Louis XIV was conceived. Below the city, in a forest not too far off, legend says that Pepin le Bref and his wife Bertrada au Grand Pied conceived Charlemagne. (My translation of the French names is: Pepin the Short and his wife Berthe Big Foot. What a pair!)
I find this rich history amazing since I never heard of the place, except for a photo on a supermarket bag.
We camped at the base of the hill in an oak woods and took a bus up to the city.
The medieval town is still intact with walls encircling it.

We came for the cathedral but enjoyed walking down the narrow streets and seeing the decorative signs hanging from the storefronts, describing the business within. The last time we saw so many different signs was at Colmar in the Alsace-Lorraine.

The cathedral – another one dedicated to Mary – was completed in 1235AD. It has five towers (usually we only see two).

The two on the western front have sixteen stone oxen looking down on square below with gargoyles above them. These oxen are said to be some of the finest examples of 12th century animal sculpture.

 

The cathedral has four rose windows.The lovely rose window on the eastern façade behind the main alter is dedicated to Mary. Beneath it are three lancet windows, each telling the stories of Mary, Jesus and Saints Stephen and Theophile. Another rose window represents the sciences as understood in the 13th century: Philosophy, Arithmetic, Rhetoric, Grammer, Dialectic, Astronomy, Medicine, Geometry and Music. This is the first rose window I have seen that isn’t dedicated to a religious theme.

The western rose window is hidden behind a great organ installed at a much later date. The organ is interesting because it has large carved human figures holding up organ pipes. We’ve only seen one other organ with similar carvings, so they are not common.

There are a lot of chapels off the sides of the lengthy nave. In one of the chapels is an iconographic painting of Jesus, purchased in Italy in 1249AD by the archdiocese of Laon. Besides the cathedral there were 3-4 other churches in the city that were active during the same timespan as the cathedral, all in the relatively small area that made up the city. Seems to me like a lot of religious competition.

We finished our walkabout with lunch at one of three kebab restaurants in town and returned to our bus stop and the campsite.

Quite like Fougeres, this city is still undiscovered. No tourist buses and no hordes to contend with. It was a great stop, and all because of a shopping bag.

9/7/17 Paris, part 2:
Our Hemingway tour expanded into a mini-literary tour when we went in search of the original location of Sylvia Beach’s bookstore “Shakespeare and Company” on Rue de l’Odeon in the 6th arrondissement.

On our way we found a plaque on Rue de Seine detailing how French author Amantine Lucile Aurora Dupin – more commonly know by her pseudonym, George Sand – had lived at that house for a year in 1831.

We also stumbled across the home of French painter Eugene Delacroix, located off the charming, tiny Furstenberg Square.

Once we reached Rue de l’Odeon, we learned that not only did Sylvia Beach have her bookstore there, but that she published James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” from that location.

Two doors down, and in an earlier time, one of our own Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine – author of the influential “Common Sense” lived. He wrote “Rights of Man” while living on Rue de l’Odeon. It’s a pretty impressive street.

Our next quest was for the cafes Hemingway and fellow literati frequented. We walked Blvd Saint-Germain – a delightfully busy street – until we came upon Les Deux Magots, supposedly Hemingway’s favorite spot in Paris in the 1920s. It turns out other famous authors and artists favored the café as well: Jean Paul Sartre, Simon de Beauvoir, even Picasso stopped by.

Les Deux Magots’ chief rival was the Café Flore, a short block away. Both cafes were used as “offices” for impoverished writers in the 1920s. Buy a coffee and they could occupy a table for hours on end, writing and holding court. Today they are a tourist destination and probably a lot more expensive.

Other cafes we saw were Brassiere Lipp, also frequented by Hemingway, and a little off literary topic, the Cafe Procope, oldest café in Paris, founded in 1686.

We visited Eglise Saint-Germain du Pres, from whom the district (and boulevard) gets its name.

This is the oldest church in Paris, originating in 542AD. It has had many changes over the centuries and currently is undergoing a seriously needed cleaning of the interior. What has been completed shows a vibrant use of color on ceilings, walls and columns vs the gray, darkened pre-cleaned appearance. Bruce says he almost likes the pre-cleaned look better because the colors are so vivid and he wonders why they picked the color combos they did. I think it looks great.

Behind the church is a small, peaceful square with an original sculpture by Picasso, “Homage to Apollinaire,” a tribute to a poet friend.
We found a website – smarterparis.com – that suggested a walking route through some of the covered walkways near the Grand Boulevards. We weren’t aware of these walkways so we decided to explore them. During the first half of the 19th century these covered arcades became very popular. Located mainly on the right bank, they contained shops and cafes catering to the wealthy.

The walk suggested we begin at the Palais Royal. Conveniently, it was new territory for us in keeping with our desire to see new things this trip. The Palace – a gargantuan affair – was built by Cardinal Richelieu (of infamous Three Musketeers fame) in 1639 and called Palais Cardinal. The royal family took over ownership after the Cardinal’s death and renamed it.

In 1830 the large inner courtyard – the Cour d’Honneur – was enclosed creating Paris’s most famous covered arcade – the Galerie d’Orleans. Unfortunately for our tour, it was demolished in the 1930s although the pairs of columns still stand. The garden area of the Palais was nicely laid out with sculptures, trees providing shade and two floral gardens separated by a great circular fountain spraying green algae-filled water all around (that was the one negative in the garden).

A teeny tiny cannon is mounted on a small plinth in the center of the garden. It has been there since 1786. It used to fire every (sunny) day at noon, with its fuse lit by the sun’s noon rays magnified through a lens. Too bad that doesn’t happen anymore.

Leaving the Palais-Royal we walked through the entrance of the Galerie Vivienne and were flabbergasted. Clothing boutiques, wine cellars, bookstores, gourmet food shops and tea rooms flanked a wide mosaic tiled floor with a beautiful glass roof. The galerie was quite long and quite lovely. Built in 1823 it still had a very old world feel to it.

From the Galerie Vivienne, we next found the Passage Choiseul. Another oldie – built in 1825 – it was not as elegant but still grand and quite well used.
From the Passage Choiseul, we got off track from the “tour” and spent the rest of our day following streets that looked interesting.

We had one more day in Paris and we chose to visit the Basilica of St. Denis, in the northern suburb of Paris. St. Denis was originally a Gallo-Roman cemetery. They are still finding remains there in archeological digs.

St. Denis is a Christian martyr of the 3rd century who was beheaded by the Romans for his faith. He is the patron saint of Paris and France. Christian legend has it that he picked up his decapitated head and walked for several miles to St. Denis, preaching repentance.
St. Genevieve, who is also the patron saint of Paris (they can have several patron saints? Doesn’t that diminish the importance?) purchased land in 475 AD and built St. Denys de la Chapelle. Dagobert, king of the Franks, had St. Denis’ relics reinterred at the basilica in 639AD. Dagobert was the first king to be buried in the basilica.

The basilica became a place of pilgrimage and the burial place of French Kings with nearly every king from the 10th to the 18th centuries being buried there, as well as many from previous centuries. The earliest French King to be re-interred was Clovis, the first king of the Franks and the founder of the Merovingian dynasty. He was also the first French king to become a Christian, circa 496AD. (If you read Dan Brown’s fictional book “The Da Vinci Code” you may remember the Merovingians were supposedly descendants of Mary Magdalene.)
The Basilica of St. Denis – originally an abbey – is regarded the first Gothic church from which all other Gothic churches were patterned. It had two great spires on its western façade, but in 1846, a violent storm damaged them so severely, one had to be torn down and the other abbreviated in height.

Today there is a renovation project to enhance the interior and also rebuilt the missing spire (there was a lot of noise going on in the church what with the workers and their power tools).

The interior has stained glass windows representing all the kings of France, and effigies and tombs abound representing those kings and their queens.

 

We saw the tomb of Francois I, the French king responsible for bring Leonardo da Vinci (and the Mona Lisa) to France. We saw the tomb of Clovis I, we saw effigies of Charles Martel and Pepin the Short – grandfather and father of Charlemagne.

Below in the crypt, we found the remains of Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, in the Bourbon vault. Above, in the church itself was a memorial statue of them. We saw the tomb of Louis XIV – the Sun King and longest reigning monarch at 72+years.

We saw Henry II and his wife, Catherine d’Medici, who was responsible for the creation of the Tuileries Gardens.

There are a lot of dead kings and queens at Basilica St. Denis.

We returned to Paris proper and began a round robin of many of the sights that are iconic Paris: Arche de Triomph, Place de Concorde, Champs Elysee, Eiffel Tower, Tuileries Gardens, Louvres, Ile St.Louis, Notre Dame and our favorite street in Paris: Rue de Rivoli.

We finished off our day with French Onion Soup at our traditional restaurant in the shadow of Notre Dame. The very same waiter we had on our first visit in 1999 is still there!
We love Paris.

9/4/17 – Paris – part 1:

We have been fortunate enough to have visited Paris four times previous to this visit. I could not begin to improve on the millions of words written over the centuries that describe the city, but I’ll add my two cents worth.
We have been to some of the world’s greatest museums in Paris, most notably the Louvre and the d’Orsay. We’ve laughed at and delighted in the Pompidou Center of Modern Art. We have visited the Roman archeological site on the Ile de la Cite, we have listened to Gregorian chants in Notre Dame. We have been awed by the exquisite jewel-like Saint-Chapelle. We have ascended the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomph; visited Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. We have searched out famous dead people in Pere Lachaise and Montparnasse cemeteries; we have visited Napoleon’s Tomb and the adjacent Military Museum. We’ve strolled along La Promenade Plantee, the first elevated garden park. We have taken the Seine boat cruise and walked the Ile St. Louis. We have visited Marie Antoinette’s cell in the Conciergerie, the Revolution’s prison. We’ve eaten French onion soup opposite the aforementioned Notre Dame and ridden the carousel at the Hotel d’Ville (that was one drunken ride!) We have hidden from water cannons at the Place de Concorde and have balked pickpockets on the Champs Elysees. We discovered Kir at a little bar near the Bastille and three-fromage sandwiches at kiosks along the Seine. We’ve walked the quays and perused the book stalls. We’ve shopped the flea markets and visited innumerable churches. We’ve wandered the catacombs and gotten freaked out by all the bones. We’ve visited the Pigalle district and the Moulin Rouge. We strode through the great modern business buildings at La Defense and admired La Grand Arche that is aligned with the Arch de Triomph.
We have always enjoyed our Paris visits.

Because we have been here several times before, we wanted to find places we have missed on our last visits.

Our first day in the city had us looking for the Cluny Museum, the Pantheon and Hemingway’s haunts.

The Cluny Museum is a former Paris home of a 16th Century Abbot of Cluny. It is undergoing a massive restoration project but was still open to visitors. Somehow, despite all our visits here, we managed to miss this museum.

The museum is the repository of medieval collections. My main interest in finally visiting this museum was to see the six tapestries entitled The Lady and the Unicorn. These are huge wall-hanging tapestries woven in the 1500s in what, at the time, were tapestry factories. They have as a focal point an aristocrat lady, a lion and a unicorn. The background is called the millefleurs style – a popular background filled with lots of varying flowers. I don’t know if the tapestries are famous because they have survived 500+ years or because they are so beautiful and their meaning so enigmatic, but I have known of their existence for decades. Five of the six tapestries are supposed to represent the five senses while the sixth’s meaning is speculative. Regardless of their meaning they are beautiful and I was so pleased to finally see them.

The Cluny also has the Gallery of Kings; 21 carved heads of the Kings of Judah, that once decorated Notre Dame but were pulled down during the revolution because they were thought to represent French kings. They were buried in rubble and only rediscovered in 1977. Other collections we saw included funerary sculptures, gold religious objects, choir stalls, and stained glass windows, but the Lady and the Unicorn won the prize.
Two other sights we overlooked were the Sorbonne and the Pantheon. The Sorbonne is the historic house of the University of Paris. The university was founded in 1257 on the Left Bank and was historically famous for protests, right up to current times. We had walked the Left Bank innumerable times but never quite got to the university.

In our search for the Pantheon we walked right into the university district and finally saw the university building itself along with a lot of students.
We continued walking the hilly neighbourhood when we entered an open space, obviously a square of some sort. Looking to our right we saw a handsome boulevard stretching down towards the Eiffel Tower. Looking to our left was… ta-da! the Pantheon.

The Pantheon was conceived in 1755(ish) by King Louis XV who, upon recovering from a serious illness, swore to build a church to honor St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. It was to house her relics. After several delays it was completed in 1790 just in time for the French Revolution to decide that it should not be a church at all, but instead become a mausoleum for famous French intellectuals.
Among those buried there are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Louis Braille and its architect, Soufflot.

Just across a street from the Pantheon is the Bibliotheca St. Genevieve, a university library with 810 names of illustrious scholars inscribed on the exterior. The library contains over 2 million documents and its second story reading room is supposed to be an architectural marvel. I tried to get in to see it, but was denied entry. I guess you must have student or faculty identity cards to get in.

Behind the library and the Pantheon is St. Etienne du Mont. The church we see today was remodeled in various stages beginning in 1492 and being completed in 1640. It has had a pretty illustrious career and now holds St. Genevieve’s remains. According to what we hear the interior is well worth a visit but the church was lock up tight as a drum when we tried.

Not too far from these sites was the flat Ernest Hemingway lived in when he first came to Paris as a 22 year old. It is at 74 Rue Cardinal Lemoine and we determined to begin a Hemingway quest. By this time it was getting later in the day and we were both tired. We kept getting lost as we walked up and down a hilly maze looking for one very short street. Eventually we found it, but its lustre was dulled by our irritation with one another. We decided to continue the Hemingway quest another day when we weren’t so tired.

As we began our search for a metro station we saw that Paris had the remains of a Roman amphitheater not too far off our route. We made a quick detour to take a photo opp and watched people actually using the amphitheater. Old men were playing pétanque and youngsters were kicking a soccer ball around. Usually the amphitheaters we have seen are designated historical sites and are off limits to actual use. It was pretty cool to see this one being respectfully used.

Finally we made it to our metro stop and took it Port Maillot where we were supposed to pick up the campsite bus at 4:45. We arrived early and joined other campers waiting to return to the campsite. The bus was scheduled to come every 30 minutes on the quarter hour, but it didn’t come. And it didn’t come at 5:15. At 5:27 I called the camping (extremely surprised my phone actually worked for something besides data usage) and learned that today was the day they had changed bus schedules and the first bus would not arrive until 5:45. At least we only had 20 more minutes to wait, but some of our fellow campers had been waiting over 2 hours by the time the bus came to pick us up. We were really finished with the day by the time we reached our campsite.

9/2/17 – Chartres:

After my lukewarm shower in Alençon, we continued our drive to Chartres. We asked Tami to take us the fastest route and, as usual, she took us where she wanted to go. As it turned out, her way was very scenic and since we weren’t in a big hurry, we didn’t complain.
At one point along our route we found ourselves on an arrow-straight road pointing to a huge chateau. Approaching the chateau, we passed two large square ponds straddling the road and as we got closer still, we were able to see the chateau was completely in ruins.

It was the Chateau de la Ferte-Vidame and it had quite a long history beginning in 1374 and ending during the French Revolution when it was plundered by looters. What we saw was the shell that, along with a vast amount of surrounding acreage, has been turned into a park and classified as a historic monument. We were fascinated by this ghostly structure with windows and roofline gone and through whose window openings plant life peeking in.

Chartres is only 32 miles from the chateau. After stopping for lunch, we began searching the horizon for our first sighting of the cathedral. The cathedral stands atop a hill and can be seen from quite a distance. When it is first spotted it appears to be a solitary structure. It isn’t until you are almost to the city itself that you can see the rest of the buildings that stand below the cathedral and make up the city. It is the most interesting phenomenon.

The land on which Chartres stands has a very long history. Before Christianity, a Roman temple stood, and before the Roman temple, it is believed to have been a Celtic Druidic center. Each religion attempted to erase its predecessor; so far, at about 1500 years, Christianity has held sway the longest.

The cathedral is the last of at least five churches that have occupied the site since the 4th century. The medieval architects sought to make it “higher, wider and lighter than all previous churches.” It is probably best known for its beautiful 176 stained glass windows, but it also has an immense amount of sculptures depicting scenes and figures from the Old and New Testaments.

A large labyrinth was built into the floor of the nave and chairs are removed every Friday between Lent and All Saints’ Day so pilgrims can walk it.
The cathedral’s real name is the Cathedral Norte Dame Chartres (Our Lady of Chartres) and it venerates the Virgin Mary.

Around 876AD the cathedral acquired the “Sancta Camisa” believed to be the tunic worn by the Virgin Mary at time of Christ’s birth. By the 12th century the relic had made the cathedral an important place of pilgrimage. A great stone screen around the choir stalls displays scenes from the Virgin Mary’s life and continues through Jesus’ birth and death.

A cleanup project that began in 2009 and intended to be completed by the end of 2017 shows the stark contrast between the smoke- blackened stonework and what was originally a bright and light interior.
There is a lot to see in this cathedral and we spent about 90 minutes just walking around the interior.

Then we returned to the outside to examine the incredible statuary mounted all over the exterior. The cathedral is a masterpiece that was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979.

The old town spills downhill to rest on the banks of the Eure river. There are many half timbered buildings, some dating from medieval times. A covered market hosts a fresh vegetable market twice a week.

At the market square we were entertained by a Breton dance group, dressed in traditional garb and dancing to traditional bagpiped music. The Scots do not own a monopoly on bagpipes.

8/31/17 – Alençon, FR

We left San Malo on Monday 8/28 to begin a slow trek to Chartres and Paris. We got as far as Tinteniaç, a small village north of Rennes, in the eastern Bretagne region. The weather was hot and sunny and the amenities at the camping looked inviting. We decided to take advantage of the lovely weather and stay a couple of days. We planned to leave on Wednesday but the weather turned rainy and rather than drive in the rain all day, we opted to stay a third night.
The clear skies returned on Thursday and we set off for a two-day drive to Chartres. While we were mapping out our route we saw the town of Fougeres had an 11th century chateau and we decided to stop and see it. It was a very pleasant surprise.

We found an aire and joined several other motorhomes parking right at the base of the chateau.

One thousand years ago, Fougeres was a promontory fortress sheltered by hills and surrounded by marshes. It was on the eastern border of the Duchy of Bretagne and perfectly situated to be a defender against the French. The current castle (chateau) dates from the 12th century. It is completely enclosed by ramparts and has 13 towers.

 

Although it is one of Europe’s largest medieval fortresses, we could easily walk around the exterior along the tourist promenade. It reminded us of both Angers and Carcassone, two other intact French fortresses with round towers and high stone ramparts.
There was also a 1000 year old church, St. Sulpice, built in in the mid-11th century just to the south of the chateau. As the town grew so did the church, but the original building still stands. We have seen many churches and cathedrals in Europe that are 1000+ years old, or at least where a Christian place of worship has stood for 1000+ years, but rarer are the buildings that actually have survived 1000 years. St. Sulpice is one such church.

I have said before and it bears repeating: I am not someone who follows any western religions, but I do love the places of worship the western religions raised to celebrate their God. The architecture, history and religious artifacts are impressive. We entered this 1000 year old church and immediately felt the weight of age.

Everywhere we looked we saw antiquity, from the nave whose painted wooden ceiling arched to resemble an overturned ship to the Lady Chapel alter with the statue of Our Lady of the Marshes, which, tradition claims, first lived in the the original chapel of the fortress.

The stained glass windows are probably the newest additions, dating from late 1800s to early1900s, with a few fragments surviving from the 15th Century incorporated in the crucifixion window. It is an impressive interior.
I do love old churches.

The town itself is typically laid out with small windy streets slipping between old buildings housing cafes, boulangeries, butcher shops, green grocers and individual homes. It is typically French and very quaint.
We saw a few tourists – and no one who spoke English – and there were no tourist buses, so it felt like we had discovered the place. The last time we “discovered” such a place was in Italy in 2008 at Portovenere, a little harbor town near the Cinque Terre. It has since been discovered, but back then there was room to explore the town. That is how Fougeres felt. I suspect some clever member of the local chamber of commerce with soon figure out how to successfully market Fougeres and in the process make the city a lot of money but ruin that which we found so special.

We spent the night in a municipal camping in Alençon, halfway between Tinteniaç and Chartres. It had the most primitive shower/toilet block we had yet encountered. We found our first “squatter” toilets of the trip and the showers had a shower head pointing directly down in the center of the tray with a pull chain to start the water. The hot water took about 20 pulls to even begin to warm up. It was a short and lukewarm shower. I had forgotten about the less than luxurious shower/toilet blocks offered in France and Spain campings and remember that I am now 69 years old and rather enjoy my simple luxuries. I wonder if I could use a squatter toilet at this age and be able to get up out of the squat! Fortunately they are not the only option…and we do have our cassette toilet in the camper.