Finally found a sunday market.... yey... purely by chance we were driving from Ecommoy past the giant traffic cone
near where we had camped to the Belvedere du Mont des Avaloirs and we came across a banner saying fetes dans la ville... but in better french. Then we got diverted because the fete was on the road we wanted! Then we found visitors parking and as we were in no rush and Dr Fred was being spontaneous we stopped and had a wander. Little fun fair, food stalls and quite a few rows of.... glorious junk mainly.
It was nice to meander through the different stalls looking for bric a brac that might become treasure. I was very restrained - these days things have to call out that I just cant live without them. Odd items almost did and then some orange and red 1960s/70s weird juice glasses did faintly whisper and more importantly the lady selling them said 2 euros... six juice glasses in a pretty tray with room for jugs - deal done.
I've spent €8 this week and I have 7 elegant champagne flutes, 6 retro jiuce glasses, olive forks, and an interesting box. Great haul!!!
We carried on driving through some really pretty villages slowly gaining height until we reached the landmark denoting the highest point in Western France. The Bevedere du Monts des Avaloir. It is a huge concrete structure errected in 1994. There are 4 stories and steps to reach the top- reaching the dizzy altitude height of 433.70 metres. It gave amazing 360 views. Its a busy little spot but enough parking and more of aconstant stream of visitors rather than lots all at once.
We walked up the 100 plus clanging metal steps ( see though so not for everyone) through the modern art on the interior walls, (remindedme of bathroom at home)
to check the fantastic views out and then went back down and had tea.
15 mins before sunset we climbed the tower again to watch a glorious sunset. We were way above tree top level and the sun glistening right on the topmost leaves was very pretty. It was lovely to watch the surrounding landscape change colour and darken as the sun slowly slip over the far horizon. The colours were superb in the sky - great swathes of deep oranges and dark reds against a pale blue sky. There is nothing that beats those colours...
The nights are dropping a bit chillier now. Not cold but cardigan weather - we sat on top of the tower for about 45 mins after sunset, we spotted a very bright venus and eventually Vega and the summer triangle - but we were cooling down so we took the metal steps that seemed to sing and wended our way back to the vansion.
Our parking app said we could park for the night so we decided to do that...
The other fantastic thing that happened was that Dr Fred found my paint palatte...hurrah... I had been quite fed up as I thought I must have lost it at a campsite pre eclipse... I really thought it had got mislaid at our friends but it just disappeared only to reappear in the van driver door! Sentimental really I've had this travel palette for a long time. I was missing it - also bit miffed as I had just placed most of the paint pans... buts its home🤩
We had a quiet nights kip and set off to look for the roches de chien in Bagnoles de l'Orne. This, apparently is a spa town - on arrival we realised that in season it was probably very popular - lots of cafes and huge posh hotels
It had a nice lake and some quite funky paganish type drift wood and metal sculptures dotted about.
We found the crags and took an uphill path until we were walking on the top of them. It was a really nice path though ancient forest but very overgrown and the actual dog rock wasn't really evident.
Dr Fred decided that touching a bit of Normandy granite would have to suffice for the time being. We walked slowly back into town - it was Monday again so nothing even pretends to be open but it was a pretty space. We decided not to sleep there it was early in the day so we carried on up the road until we found a fab spot in a forest clearing and we decided to spend the night there. It looked a bit wild... if I disappear its because I've been fed to the wild boar.... (8 weeks is a long time in a van 🤣🤣)
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