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Tour de France 2018 in the Vendée: a photo journal
In the Vendée would like to thank Vendée Tourisme, team Direct Energie, Christian Prudhomme and everybody who lobbied to bring Le Tour 2018 to our beautiful area! In addition to the event itself, the anticipation and build-up started many months in advance. Children, the elderly, and other groups worked together to create a festive atmosphere in all of the villages. Roundabouts filled with flowers and painted bicycles were sometimes accident-worthy. The sculpture in the Roland Berland roundabout at La Châtaigneraie, which honours French cycling champion Roland Berland, is simply stunning! It was created by artist Renaud Création. Therefor we would like to thank the Vendéen volunteers, merchants and organisations who participated in and contributed to the event. From start to finish, Le Tour de France 2018 in the Vendée was a fun and beautiful experience! Your hard work and passion is appreciated. Merci!Share this Post
Regional Cuisine with Mogettes
Recently it was suggested to my mother-in-law that she go through a radical life change to address some health issues: to stop eating things that have a face. Or is derived from them. The diagnosis came right before my parents-in-law would visit us in the Vendée, and so the challenge to find meals a diabetic with heart issues could eat, was on. As a part-time vegetarian myself, I knew it would not be an easy feat in this area. But we found the local white kidney bean, called mogette in French, would serve the purpose of a fiber -and protein rich diet well. Even in restaurants, the ham that is typically served as part of this local delicacy, is traditionally prepared on the side. At the end of August 2018, we attended la fête de l’agriculture de Vendée in La Chataigneraie. Wonderfully, the in-season crops had been grown in an on-site demonstration. About the …
A Day Trip to Oradour-sur-Glane
Truthfully, it was a bit of a drive from where we live near the Marais Poitevin in the Vendee, but Oradour-sur-Glane had been at the top of my imaginary list of places in the world “to shoot”. A poor choice of terms, I realize. But photoshoots in decaying, urban settings or ruins are actually “a thing”, even if amateur photographers like me must achieve their subject using dubious ways and the most unimaginable backdoors. The village, located in the Limousin area of France, is quite famous among photography enthusiasts. I’d say it is as coveted a subject as the fairy tale worthy, Neo-Gothic Chateau Miranda was (located near Brussels in Belgium, it was -sadly- demolished in 2016), or even Chernobyl (of the infamous nuclear disaster), though Oradour-sur-Glane is much easier to reach, doesn’t require bribes or radiation meters, and once you arrive doesn’t require breaking and entering. After a leisurely …
Day trip to Mont St. Michel by night
We may be semi-permanent travelers these days so it’s probably a little snooty to admit that we don’t enjoy huge masses of tourists. But we do avoid those hot spots where possible. We can’t help it. Our introverted nature means we seek tranquility. Tranquility is one of many reasons we chose to live in the Vendée. Another is the fact that Le Mont-St-Michel, one of our favourite spots on the planet, is just an easy drive away. With October and Halloween just around the corner, I have been thinking about the last time we visited The Mount. We left late in the day for a romantic dinner there, and were surprised to discover that between 8pm and 8am (20h00 and 08h00), the famous Unesco World Heritage site folds itself back in time all the way to its pilgrimage roots. Before our first daytime experience at Mont-St-Michel, we purposefully read nothing about it. …
In the Echoes of History
In our first six months in the Vendee, we lived near a beautiful abbey called the Prieurie de Grammont. Sitting like a romantic cube in a vast stretch of farmland, the abbey is built of stacked golden sandstone and oozes an air of mystery in the off-season. There are few windows and the sun-bleached doors are firmly shut for most of the year. Several times a week we took our dogs to run around in the garden, and to walk the dirt roads slicing through surrounding fields for some thorough exercise. We loved it, savoring the wind in our faces and snoots, and relishing the changing colors of farm life. The fields went from brown, to green, and sprung bright yellow with colza flowers. We greeted sheep and cows, making note that the fences moved to other pastures with the livestock, so there was always wide open space to take …