Melody, Douarnenez, Pont Croix and Audierne

Oh I am the smartest person! LOL (I wish) I worked out how to use google maps and embed our travel maps in my blogs. Ha. So satisfying. By clicking on the plus or minus signs on the lower right hand side of the maps you can enlarge or zoom in at will. This helps if you're not quite sure which part of France we're traveling in ... just zoom out using the minus sign until the whole of France is visible.

I apologise that there's not much chat in this blog. Mainly photographs. People and fun incidents are what I really like to chat about, and there haven't been that many for me to tell you about recently. I do want to give an idea as to where we are though, so here goes.

This first map is our wander down to the coast at St-Gildas-de-Rhuys. I just called it St Gildas in my previous blog, but when I was doing this map I discovered that the real St Gildas is part of Vannes and not really on the coast at all.

What the map below shows is the time after our first visit to St-Gildas-de-Rhuys, when we went up to Rennes, back down to St-Gildas-de-Rhuys, up to Mauron to collect my pot plants from a good friend, and then out to Pors Peron where we've bought the leisure home.




Not being securely trained at this stage, and with no fences to contain her, Bridie had to be on a lead outside on the patio for a week or three. She wasn't too happy about it, but sadly that's how it had to be!

At last the shed was put up and I had one day in which to paint the windows ... which I did :-) And so our little "complex" became complete. Just waiting for the garden to take shape now.

There are a few more pics of our stunning roses on my Road Trips with Milly Facebook page. Here: https://www.facebook.com/RoadTripsWithMilly/

The days were really hot this summer and we were, of course, reluctant to either leave Bridie alone in a closed-up and hot leisure home, or take her out in a hot motorhome, so we didn't do too much traveling around. We did spend a day in Douarnenez where we had lunch; an evening in Pont Croix for supper; and a look-see day in Audierne where we found a gallery I may submit to.

Douarnenez - above and below. Different parts of the harbour.
I've found a load of more pics of Douarnenez which I'd like to keep with this blog. Instead of overloading the blog, I've made a separate page for them which you can find here : http://roadtripswithmilly.blogspot.fr/p/douarnenez.html

As you can see, there was loads of boat activity in this part of the harbour.

Pont Croix

Pont Croix is our local town for small shopping expeditions to the Super U, filling up with diesel, the Vet, and the doctor.

Apart from one evening having moules 'n frites  in the town square, I haven't yet properly visited the town. It was a lovely evening though, watching three young fellas playing French bowls (petanque?) and giggling at a large party of folk as their group swelled to about two dozen. It's exhausting for the lips and cheeks being French! As each person arrived they went around to each and every person already waiting there and double-kissed them on the cheek - sometimes not even really looking at the person at all! It was a lesson learned - never arrive late at a party. Arrive late and you're the one going around doing all the kissing. Arrive early and you only need to stand still and offer your cheeks.

The views of the bowls game, and the town square, we captured that evening ... a whole 2 of them. Obviously our meal and spending time together was more important!

It's heartening to see that young folk are keeping the tradition of petanque and bowls (I haven't yet found out the difference between the two or if they mean the same thing!) alive. There's a very active club on the edge of town as well. Way to go Pont Croix!

Audierne

Our afternoon in the coastal town of Audierne (see map above) was also mainly about boats and the harbour. The first pic shows you a road leading up the hill which I'd like to investigate one day, but on this afternoon our main aim was to find La Galerie which our friends Gearie and Linda Kenworthy had mentioned to us.

Below is the pic of La Galerie

Boats, boats and more boats ....... if any artists out there would like to use any of the images as painting inspiration, you're most welcome. It would be great if you emailed or Facebook-ed me an image of your painting though ... would love to see that please.

Well, that gives you an idea of the environs we're now living in. Next, we'll take you one peninsula up from where we are. We spent a really lovely week at l'Abbe ... with people to talk about! LOL

Over the Glen Gesh Pass to Fintown

It's amazing how quickly a day can go by, you can see so much, and only travel about 50 kms. This is obviously just a taster trip to Donegal ... how on earth did we think we could get to know it well in such a short time! How arrogant we were :-)

Glen Colm Cille is a peaceful village at this time of year. In the morning, as we puttered through, on our way to find some cliffs, we spotted the Evie Hone stained glass window in the church.

Our little church in the Maam Valley is also the proud owner of an Evie Hone stained glass window ... I must pop by and photograph that one too soon.

Comparing them to the Cliffs of Moher in Co Clare, the Slieve League cliffs at Glen Colm Cille are quite awe inspiring. These cliffs are more "jaggedy", not falling straight down into the sea but rather sloping down with powerful-looking pointy bits!

Thanks to a fair amount of Furze burning in the area, the atmosphere

was rather smoky and not the best for photography.

I loved the contrast of colour, line and atmosphere ...

cool, blue, powerful, jaggedy cliffs and peaceful, golden, sheep-grazing fields

And I can never resist a few wave-crashing shots!

After a bit of soaking up the sun while we did a bit of cliff-gazing, we set off again.

Sometimes we can see huge similarities here in Donegal with Connemara in the golden, rusty and brown colours, the grassy vegetation and the mountains, and then a few minutes later, along a rather flat stretch of countryside, we're saying "Gosh, this feels like another country, doesn't it". Even the turf, although piled the same, is often covered in straw ... something we don't see in Connemara. I feel a need to stop and photograph these turf piles, thinking it may not be long before this picturesque method of cutting fire fuel is lost forever, but so far there hasn't been a convenient stopping place.

In our endeavours to get closer to Letterkenny for a Thursday car service at the Fiat dealer, we chose a route to Fintown over the Glen Gesh Pass. For some kilometres the road gently sloped upwards and we were duped into thinking this pass was even lower than our own pass into the Maam Valley ... and then suddenly, around a bend, we looked down to this:

Real first gear driving down that little hill! Stunning. Although, again we were reminded that photography has been rather hindered for a day or two by a bit of gorse bush (furze) burning, leaving the atmosphere a little less than clear.

Going through the village of Ardara a little while later, I spotted a sign to Stephen Bennett's art studio and gallery. Stephen and I were part of a group of nine artists who made up the Irish contingent at the 2005 Biennale art Exhibition in Florence. This was a must-do stop! Luckily the boreen to Stephen's house was just wide enough for Milly and we spent a happy time saying Hi and enjoying Stephen's gallery of work. Look him up on google ... it's worth it! Great work, great chap.

Not long after that, we found Fintown, where we spent a peaceful night, looking out across Lough Finn to mist-topped mountains. We couldn't have asked for a better spot to park, especially with a pub right across the road! Of course that meant a couple of pints for Alan and a glass of wine for me at The Railway Inn. Great pub. They encourage motorhomers to park in the spaces across the road from them and always offer oft-needed water supplies. Nice folk.

And today it's the outskirts of Letterkenny where Milly is getting a titivating service and we're catching up with a bit of reading and blogging. We're aiming for a quiet weekend with a lot of painting time for me (I hope) and a much looked-forward-to meeting with Facebook friend and artist Liz Doyle on Cruit Island tomorrow.