Holidays in Normandy and beyond.

Posted by Rosie

France is a wonderful country full of huge variations which can make choosing where to holiday quite difficult.  Of course I may be a little bit biased but I do think Normandy is a great place to visit.  It's not too far from the ferries if you are travelling from the UK, it has beautiful countryside and loads of tourist/heritage places to visit (Bayeux, Mont St Michel etc) as well as all the sites associated with the D-Day Landings.

Maybe you want more though, so I have a suggestion you might like?  How about a 2 stop holiday with one week here at Eco-Gites of Lenault in Normandy and a second in another region?  If you don't want to travel too far, what about Brittany or if distance is not a problem why not fly or train in down to Provence in the south of France?  And we just happen to have 2 friends with lovely gites in both these regions.

In the western region of Finistère in Brittany our friend Maria has 2 gites called Ty Hir.  The Grand Longère sleeps 5-7 and Le Petit Longère sleeps 2-4.  They are in a wonderfully quiet location and like Normandy there is still loads to do locally.  Have a look at the website for more details.   Remember, too, that if you are travelling by ferry you could sail into Caen or Cherbourg to visit us and then sail out of St Malo or Roscoff after visiting Ty Hir.

Ty Hir in Brittany

If you would like to see both the north and the south of France then I recommend Provence as a second stop and our friend Phoebe has a wonderful gite called Lou Messugo where you could stay.  It sleeps 2-4 and boasts a 10m swimming pool for when you need to cool off.  To get to Lou Messugo, Nice International Airport is only 25 minutes away and Antibes train station for TGV connections to the rest of France is 30 minutes away.

Lou Messugo in Provence

Tempted?  To contact us at Eco-Gites of Lenault click here to access our website or email us here.  You can also telephone 0033 2310 99 27 51 (up to 8pm UK/9pm French time please).  How to contact Ty Hir and Lou Messugo can be found on their website links above.

Eco-Gites of Lenault, Normandy, France

Le Jardin de Fougères

Posted by Rosie

As I wrote about on Monday we recently spent a day in Fougères, a medieval town about an hour and a half from Eco-Gites of Lenault.  It had a large and varied market, some great architecture and this fabulous castle:

Fougères Castle

It also has some delightful gardens with a great range of floral displays.  

These grasses growing above the lower herbaceous border reminded me of fireworks and with a theme of De l'ombre à la lumière (from darkness to light) maybe this was the intention!

Grass fireworks?

The soft, curved planting in front of the more angular church made an interesting comparison but we have to say we had no idea why the aeroplane/large insect sculpture was there!

Fougères Town Gardens

On a more formal note we assume this is the town crest for Fougères.  It is beautifully detailed and maintained so well.

Fougères Town Crest

These unusual umbelliferous plants caught my eye. I thought at first they were wild carrot but I don't think they were and with the amount we saw they must have been planted rather than a pleasant weed invasion!  The spiralling of the flower heads was so pretty and not something I had seen before. 

Did you also know that all all umbellifer plants including plants such as cow parsley, carrot, parsnip and dill bear hundreds of flowers.  Each flower head like this, is in fact made up of hundreds of tiny individual flowers?  A closer inspection will reveal that what might at first apear to be just a petal is in fact a whole flower complete with all the relevant parts that I learnt about at school but have now mostly forgotten!

Hundreds of flowers

To reach the castle and medieval town from the more modern town you need to climb down a steep hill.  The gardens continue all the way down the slope and include this formal French knot garden perched high over the old buildings below.  I pity the people who had to flatten out this area to create this garden and the person who has to clip the hedges now!

The flowers were not just restricted to the town gardens and this orange and blue bed near the castle entrance also caught my eye - I just love the colour combination that managed to shine out despite it being a relatively dull day.

I should be back with more garden updates form the garden hear at Eco-Gites of Lenault next week.  Now though, for more garden blogs why not head on over to the How Does Your garden grow linky run by Annie over at Manneskjur:

A trip to Fougères

Posted by Rosie

On Saturday friends were travelling up from Poitiers to catch the ferry at St Malo at the end of their holiday and wanted to meet up with us somewhere on their way back.  Fougères, just over the border into Brittany is an hour and a half from us and en route for them and not somewhere we had been before.  A quick look on Google confirmed it seemed a nice place to visit and so the meet up was arranged.

Our friends were due to arrive at around 2.30 so we decided to get there earlier so we could have a look round the town before lunch with them and then a trip round the castle together.

Saturday is market day in Fougères and a very nice market it is to.  We didn't buy anything but thoroughly enjoyed perusing the wide variety of stalls and taking in the atmosphere of what was a very pretty town.

Locally made dried sausages - "saucisson".

Organic Fruit and Vegetables

After the market and a coffee we ambled our way down to the castle.  Interestingly the castle was not on the highest point as you might expect but at the base of the hill and the more modern town is high in the hill.  We wondered why but later learnt that this was because of water - a well had been dug in the centre of the castle to provide residents with water when they were under siege where-as there was no well water on the higher ground.

Our walk took us first through what is now the town gardens next to the church where there are some fabulous floral displays which you'll find on this garden post.  It is also where we found this pretty heart-shaped window:

Heart shaped window at Fougères

 

Town gardens at Fougères

After the gardens we found ourselves in the Medieval part of the town with it's narrow streets and old buildings where there were plenty of signs explaining about the buildings and what went on there:

Fougères was a major tanning town in the Middle Ages

Medieval Fougères

We had lunch with our friends at a very nice and not at all expensive restaurant just outside the entrance to the castle we then went into the castle itself. 

A nice spot for lunch

As you might expect with a couple of boys, we have visited a fair few castles in our time. How did this one rate?  Pretty darn good I would say.  It was imposing, there was plenty to see and do and we really liked it.  But that is all I am going to say and maybe one day you will visit Fougères and sometimes knowing less about a visit can make it all the more enjoyable.  We didn't know anything about the castle but we definitely felt the 20€ we spent on entry fees was well worth it.  The only thing I would point is that if you have a pushchair there are rather a lot of steps you where you will have to carry the pushchair up and down. 

Fougères Castle

Fougères may not be the closest castle to Eco-Gites of Lenault but I heartily recommend both the castle and the town itself for a day trip.  Have you been and if so what did you  think about it?