This Thanksgiving started two days early for us. Our delightful neighbor Catherine invited us to her house for dinner with Michel and Dominique and her family, where Catherine roasted a duck for us. It was fabulous. That felt more to me like Thanksgiving than anything I could have done on my own. For friends like her, I am very thankful.
What does that have to do with Bretagne? Well Catherine's husband is from Bretagne and they were full of suggestions about where we should go and what we should see. Oh - you've never heard of Bretagne, sorry. That's the funny little thing about learning geography in a foreign language. Bretagne is the beautiful northern coast of France that was once an independent entity, once owned by England, well sort of, and is now the sleepy little tourist and fishing towns on the Atlantic ocean. That is, I guess unless there is a French vacation, then apparently it is packed with people, cars, and campers. Kind of like Breckenridge on 4th of July weekend.
So, we got in the car and headed in a steady rain, about due west. Our first stop was a chateau in Le Rheu, 3 Km from Rennes. It is called Le domaine de la Freslonneire. It cost 74 Euros for the night and it offers an 18 hole golf course and swimming pool and club. A great place for a retreat.
This chateau is in the same family that has cared for it for 900 years. It was started in around 1300, but officially was built in the 1700s. It is a little worn, but lovingly cared for, and a great place to sleep. We awoke the next morning, and breakfasted with 900 years of history apparent everywhere we looked. More importantly, we made a plan for the day. It turns out, we were just about 50 miles from an ancient forest rumored to have been the grounds of King Arthur, Merlin, and much wizardry. We went off in search of a fountain rumored to cure mental illness, Fontaine de Barenton and the Valley of No Return. please note, it was all shrouded in a mysterious mist, making it more difficult to find!
Well if you are going to a fountain with magical water, you better take a vessel to cart some back with! So as soon as we could find a roadside recycling bin, Pat was climbing in looking for the perfect sanity water holder. VOILA! A beer bottle and a cork. Perfect. I won't tell the rest of the story yet. You will just have to wait.
