Vitre

This is a small town with a fascinating chateau and town walls. On the way we detoured to Villedieu-les-Poeles to visit the bell foundry which cast the Peace Bell for Bayeux (and is currently casting a sister bell). The town itself is famous for its copper pans, the <<poeles>> of the name. I could have bought some, at very great expense and considerable weight. All kudos to my sister who bought a whole set in France years ago and shipped them home.

Bell in courtyard	Decorations using lost wax casting
Bells in pit ready for pouring	A new bell, tuned and polished

The foundry still uses the age old techniques, some of which involve goat hair and cow dung mixed in clay, and the same metal composition as has always been used to make their bells. The mould has to be constructed to produce a hollow form complete with words and decorations (using the lost wax process) and the bell, no matter its size, must be fully poured in 3 minutes or the metal may begin to solidify. It involves both heavy physical work and artistic skills. Afterwards, the bell is perfectly tuned by “gently” grinding the inside with an angle grinder (not so traditional). The outside may be sandblasted to make a silvery look, or treated with various compounds to create golden or darker hues. In time any bell will become dark and a little green.

It was pouring rain today. We went on to Granville, a city on the sea, but while we overlooked the harbour as we ate a light lunch, it wasn’t weather conducive to exploration. We did see a few of those grim German bunkers on top of the hill.

In Vitre things were no better. We had chosen a small, traditional French hotel, Le Petit Billot. Madame was gregarious and charming, happy to point out all the things we should see. But it was wet and cold and I was unwell, so I put myself to bed and Nick dined alone. In the morning the weather was slightly better and we could look around.

The town is loaded with streets of medieval, half timbered houses and people live and work in them. This is not a museum town or particularly a tourist town; though there are many empty shops in the medieval core there are also lots of residences in surrounding suburbs and the place is full of business people during the day.

Ancient half-timbered houses	Porch houses
A street of houses, still lived in	An old hotel

The beautiful old Benedictine abbey church seems now to be the parish church and they are renovating some of the monastery nearby. It was odd in that the choir (altar and surrounds) is at an angle to the nave, something it is difficult to show in photographs. The nave ceiling is a gorgeous ship’s keel wooden type.

The abbey	Nave, looking to the organ
The off centre choir	Glass in the choir

The drawpiece is the chateau, restored by a disciple of Viollet le Duc and absolutely huge. The pointy rooves may not be original but it is as faithful a renovation as possible around the turn of last century. One vast section is now the Town Hall, the castle itself is contiguous with the city walls and it is a remarkable place to visit.

The chateau from the vast square in front	The main tower
Part of the town from the tower	The city walls
One fireplace with Nick as a measuring stick	Another vast fireplace; oh those heating bills

While we visited a few other places such as the Chapel of St Nicholas, photos were not allowed. It housed regional church treasures and some, such as the art deco chalice, were very beautiful indeed.

The next morning we dropped into the Chateau of Madame Sevigny, famed for her letters to her daughter. She seemed to prefer living at this rather small and countrified chateau. We were disappointed in the visit. We could only walk in part of the gardens and grounds, and while they had good bones, they were not well presented, with flower borders very sparse and parterre patterns marked by swathes cut in the grass. We couldn’t access the front of the building as that is now part of a golf course. Disappointing!

Chateau of Madam Sevigny

The bare gardens and the reverse side of the chateau

 

Tomorrow: Cancale (and Lynn gets her feeds of oysters)

Bayeux

We sure were lucky with our choice of B&B in Bayeux. The most beautiful French house above the gardens of Place General de Gaulle and just a block from the cathedral; it was decorated in classic French style in the public rooms which were also the living rooms of the family. This was our room with attached dressing room and bathroom. Very special! http://www.chambres-hotes-bayeux-lepetitmatin.com/?Chambre-d-hotes-Bord-de-Mer&lang=en

Bayeux itself is a very lovely town with many medieval, half-timbered houses, beautiful old houses behind stone walls and large gates and of course the cathedral.

Maison on the main street

Roses and gateway

The cupola of the cathedral

We had stayed one night on a previous occasion in Bayeux and so were not intending to see the tapestry but to see some of the WW2 D-Day places, with a guide. We chose Overlord Tours and to see the Canadian and UK sites rather than the American ones. What we hadn’t figured in was that June 6 is the 70th anniversary of D-Day so plans for all sorts of visitors and festivities were well underway and the place will be closed off in a fortnight from now.

There was just our guide Olivier and young Canadian couple and us, so the tour was quite personalised. It was also a bit disjointed. There is little in the way of photos or relics to record the landings on these beaches, Juno, Gold and Sword because the residents needed to rebuild later whereas the US landing areas were less well built up and much of the visual remains are still there. And they took lots of photos.

First stop a German gun battery where guns are still in place, which is quite rare because of the value of the metal after the war. These batteries were almost impregnable unless hit directly or blown up by hand grenade. It was in one of these that the first scene from The Longest Day was shot, the one where the officer looks out to sea and sees the fog lift to reveal the landing fleet (except that he apparently wasn’t there but off dallying somewhere instead).

Massive concrete bunkers protected the guns from all but a direct hit

This one was used as an ammunition dump after capture. Something went bang!

Then to Arromanches. We had previously seen some of the caissons on the beaches and parts of the Mulberry Harbour that were towed over to protect the fleet as it landed, however, I was not aware that these concrete things on the beach were once floating pontoons which were joined by metal bridge sections so the tanks and trucks could drive from the ship to the shore and the Red Cross trucks could drive the wounded back to the ships. What a massive undertaking to prepare and tow these things across the channel. Overall, the thing that most impressed was the logistics of the undertaking, especially when we consider the massive egos of the various leaders of the time.

Caissons and Mulberry Harbour

Remains of caissons

A section of bridge

So as the fleet arrived, landing craft attempted the beaches which were under sideways gunfire and then the troops were to capture the gun placements so the unloading could commence. There was very heavy loss of the landing craft as they attained the beaches, though most of the big guns could not be fired seawards here; the Germans expected attack from inland or along the beach, but that also meant that to capture the guns they had to be able to aim right into the bunker, and that meant getting a tank in the right position, in one case through the village and up the street leading to the gun emplacement.

That is a bunker in the backyard

The one place it can’t fire is out to sea

Some of the soldiers had to make their way inland to capture the bridges across the Orne River and canal at Pegasus Bridge. Without these bridges the allies couldn’t move easily to Caen. This was where the first strike of D-Day really happened. The 6 Horsa gliders towed by aircraft were released to glide into the area. One landed less than 100m from Pegasus bridge very soon after midnight. Each carried 30 men and a small armoured truck and under cover of decoy bombing they landed without the Germans being aware and secured the bridge while the group of commandos from the landing barges met up with them by about lunch time. The commandos were led by the Scottish Lord Lovat who had his piper play them into battle. Legend is the Germans refused to shoot the piper because they though him mad.

A Horsa glider at the museum. I can’t even imagine it flying, let alone holding 30 men and a truck

The original Pegasus bridge

When it became necessary to replace Pegasus Bridge with a wider one, a man bought the original and it now stands in the grounds of the nearby museum, along with a replica glider as the originals were “harvested” by locals for wood and building materials.

Finally, of course, we visited some of the cemeteries. The British liked to bury their dead as near as possible to where they fell, so often there were some graves in local cemeteries as well as in Commonwealth War Graves.

The personal epitaph “Into the mosaic of victory was laid this precious piece”

Poppies on a well tended grave

I certainly finished the day with a much clearer understanding of this section of history.
In the morning another lovely breakfast, then a local market to wander through. Nick bought two jars of honey and I tasted some farmers calvados which would strip the duco off a car. Then off to the local museum where we wandered through the old Palais de Justice rooms and then through a museum from pre-history to the modern day.

Ceiling in the court

Ceiling in the Justices’ rooms

The thing that most amazed was the lace. This is bobbin lace made by intertwining thread around pins which make the “holes” in the lace. I still don’t understand what keeps it from untwining. The patterns are pricked out on paper and that allowed a number of women to work on the same design and then pieces would be stitched together. Mind bogglingly detailed and time consuming work. The beautiful shawl used as an example would have taken thousands of hours. A nearby shop/museum of the art had little edged handkerchiefs or lace motifs saying something like 24 hours of work and priced at about E3/hour or E72 a piece.

In the afternoon we re-visited the cathedral and its beautiful old crypt. Their major contribution to the celebrations is the baptism of a new bell, the Peace Bell. Now it sits in the centre of the nave awaiting the ceremonies. The next day we visited its foundry.

Nave	Flying buttresses
Crypt	Crypt detail
	The new Peace bell

Tomorrow: The little town of Vitre