Towns of Central Brittany

A few photos of typical towns and villages in central Brittany in May

Me... on the left!

Ancient woodland of Central Brittany

Seeing as I'm here by myself and going to work in the morning while OH is in Brittany "renovating" I'm feeling a bit hard done by .... so I've been looking through some of the beautiful photos my sis took at this time last year... and dreaming...

Old ideas... and new dreams

Went to the Smallholder and Garden Festival at Llanelwedd  at the weekend... Euros had a welsh festival stall there with work... so we met up for lunch.
Anyway he's found a few good deals on PV panels and we had a word with Ty Mawr about wipeable paint for the kitchen to cover the lime rendering which Euros can now do (after his christmas present of a lime rendering day course with Ty Mawr ;)

Anyhow... they now have a range of breathable, waterproof (yes alongside breathable!!) mineral paints just perfect for the job :)
Also watched a demonstration of how to grind grain ...

...and decided never to do that.... and dreamed of having the most luxurious, all singing, all dancing chicken house with bells on... euros says he can build me one whenever I get some chucks. And my, oh, my.... the chickens there were ***unbelievable*** I mean, how could you ever pick one (or three)... there's just so many glorious varieties to choose from... anyway hopefully I'll be able to help design their fabulous new chicken palace!!! The runner ducks, who waddle along next in the dream, will obviously want their own luxury runner duck pad:)
Then there's the goats...

Bon Repos

This is a photo from the cottage... down the lane to the canal...

 ...along the Nantes-Brest canal towpath

for 4 km... you arrive at the beautiful abbey of Bon Repos..

Every August they hold a brilliant show at the abbey and so for most of the summer the horses for the show are there..

The lovely photos are courtesy of my sister Nikki... who is  Sasha Doll Style

Les allées couvertes...

Not far from the cottage is the Gorge de Daoulas, and if you follow the road through the Gorge for a mile or so you come to a steeply banked lane, almost tunnel like with tall branches closing in at the top.
A couple of hundred yards up this hidden path brings you out on top of the world... where you can find the Covered Alleys of Liscuis.

Nobody knows for sure the original purpose of these neolithic structures... of which we came across 6 all within a couple hundred yards of each other.

They could easily be used as shelters on this high, gorse covered, windswept place... although I find it hard to believe that stones of this magnitude would have been moved into these positions originally for shelter.

Whatever their reason this is a spiritual place...

with misty views over the majestic Abbey of Bon Repos.

barn

GREAT NEWS!!! The builder along with his brother and brother-in-law are going to do the barn... which used to house a cider press ;) -*

This is the back of the house and the barn's to the right of the picture

This is the barn from the lane to the canal... and as you can see the barn is built up to the lane. This means the builders will be using a kind of 'bookend' metal structure inside, tanking it etc. against water and then lime rendering the inside of the building....

The fireplace is filled with old piles of roof slate... The local roofer who fixed the ( previously caved in) roof of the barn was able to recycle a few rows of these which you can see on the previous pic.

Bathtime!!

... got loads of stuff organised... met with a builder who's going to give us a quote for doing the barn, which is great AND he seems to be pretty clued up and professional, so hoping for a good quote and we can get things moving :)

AAAnd we've * got * a * bath**** with hot water!!!

OK I know there's still I big hole in the floor so effectively you're in the kitchen but isn't it BEAUTIFUL!! No more trips to swimming pools/lakes/campsites to get washed. Pure.... luxury :)

The hot water's all off the log burner too; a gravity fed system means we don't have to depend on any electric, which is quite handy seeing as we don't have any  ;) (from a supplier I mean as we're off grid)

It's also been decided that sorting a stairs to get up to the bathroom is my domain.. mmmmm