Following breakfast and a load of laundry, we headed into our local Carrefour grocery store to re-supply for the next few days. Dave had to pick out wines all by himself, which was a bit traumatic and took a lot of time. Monday is re-stocking day at the grocery store, so all the aisles are full of dollies holding boxes and crates of foods. But there aren't many people shopping, so getting around, even with my scooter isn't difficult. We learned that the fishmonger speaks excellent English and complimented me on my French. (Not that it was a tricky conversation.) We bought salmon to grill for dinner. This time there was Epoisses cheese to our joy. (Janis, it was in the case in the back of the store.) And of course we found a few more cheeses to add to the apéro selection. Dave went a little crazy in the cookie aisle and we now have 5 different types of cookies to try. I bought our usual.
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| Dave unloading the cart |
All was going well until it came to buying mustard. There's a whole aisle of condiments for every sort of taste, but when I got to the mustard shelves, they were EMPTY! Not a single jar. We had noticed a shortage while in Burgundy and it seems to have gotten worse. I asked a woman who was stocking shelves and she told me it was a bad harvest. Once home, I googled this lack of mustard in France and found that indeed, mustard around the world suffered. Burgundy only produced 48% of expectation last year. Canada had a heat inversion which damaged their crops of mustard seed. Russia and Ukraine export mustard seeds - but, of course, not now. So prices have skyrocketed and supplies are scarce. We should thank our lucky stars that we have had mustard to this date. I'm not sure what we can use as a substitute. Oh, my!
Home for lunch, it's warm enough (22 degrees Celsius) to eat outside and figure out what adventure we want to do this afternoon. . We cracked open the cider we bought in Rochefort-en-Terre. It went great with lunch. Dry and fruity (apples), sparkling and cold. Good on a summery day. More later
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| lunch on the patio with cider |
We decided to head to Saint-Dégan, just north of Auray. One of the things I wanted to learn about here was the customs and culture of the Bretons. In Saint-Dégan, there's an ecomusée about life more than 150 years ago which opens at 2:00 for the afternoon.
We drove into the interior of Brittany on small roads which let us see the landscape - very green and verdant, farm crops, occasional pastures of cows, and clusters of farm buildings and small villages. Very different from the vistas you can see along the shore.
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| Saint Dégan - entrance to ecomuseum |
The first order of business was to see if I could visit this outdoor museum comprising a collection of 18th century farm buildings. Just to get to the ticket office required a half-dozen steps, but the woman inside kindly suggested we see if the scooter would work and come back and pay at the end if we were successful. She sent us down a blacktopped road that was easy to navigate. The houses often had a step or two, which I could negotiate, so I was able to visit all the locations. (It's only a few buildings.)
This museum is the result of an association which formed 50 years ago to preserve these buildings on in situ. They have been renovating (thatched roofs were recent) and expanding their presentation of the site since then.
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| thatched storage building |
Because we went in the back way, we did not do the buildings in order. Besides the artifacts and signage, there were videos in 2 of the buildings that were very helpful. Well, if I had the right vocabulary to talk about farming practices, it would have been better. But we got the gist of what what being shown. We agreed that this museum could just as well be transported to Wisconsin and be accurate. Farming practices 200 years ago were the same in Wisconsin, although the farms were built with a lot more wood.
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| this more "modern" farm building had a grandparent apartment on the left, then the family apartment in the middle, and the barn (separated by a stone wall from the house) on the right. |
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| the barn side of the house had a machine for chopping the harvested grasses into animal feed. The piles along the wall are the same stuff, but left whole and covered with leaves for animal bedding. |
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| This is the family apartment with the bed, a table, a fireplace (out of view) and storage for clothes and dishes. I don't know where the children slept, but there were stone steps going to an attic area over the barn. Perhaps there? |
One thing that took me till the end to understand is what the French call les Landes. These are fields where the soil is too poor for crops. Covered in heather, gorse (an evergreen with yellow flowers), and grasses. Farmers nevertheless harvested them bits at a time for feed and bedding for their livestock, or wood for heating their homes. At one time 1/3 of Brittany was covered in les Landes, but now only 14000 hectares (35,000 acres) remain.
It seems that the Bretons liked to plant apple trees near their cultivated fields and thus created a lively trade in cider.
Breton farms were long thatched buildings with 2 doors and few windows. At first, people and livestock co-habited - people on one side of the house, animals stabled on the other. Later farms built a stone wall in the center of the house separating the people from the animals.
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| an earlier house - I think the roof would have been thatched |
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| The family side (benches are for group tours) - bed for parents and grandparents, chimney for cooking and heat |
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| there is no wall separating the living area from this barn area where cows, sheep, horse, chickens would all co-exist. |
Another feature was that families lived with the grandparents - again, at first all in one room, and later, by adding a stone room extension to the house for the grandparents.
The family quarters in both instances were a single room with a fireplace at the end for heat and cooking, wooden beds that were completely enclosed except for one side, and chests for clothing and dishes.
Baking was done in a community oven which was fired up once per week and everyone baked their bread at the same time.
Farm equipment was primitive and most labor was done by hand.
By 1950, farming had changed as technologies changed. An area that once supported hundreds of family farmers was now owned by only a few large farms. This ecomuseum makes the point that the loss of biodiversity has adverse affects on all of nature and advocates for preserving at least some of the areas that were once covered in Landes. I expect we'd hear a similar argument in Wisconsin.
We stopped back at the "accueil" (welcome) and paid 6 Euros each for our hour and a half self-guided tour of Breton farming in the 1800s. Well worth the visit.
It was a little after 3:30, so we had time for another stop. The second most visited pilgrimage site (after Lourdes) is only a few miles away from the ecomusée. How could we not visit Sainte-Anne d'Auray? On the route to Compostella (is there a church that isn't on this road?), The church is venerated as the only site where Saint Anne appeared to a human, in this case, Yvon Nicolazic. She asked him to rebuild a small chapel on the site, which he did. When word spread of this miraculous appearance, and pilgrims came from all over to venerate St. Anne. The chapel became too small and was replaced by a basilica in the 1860s. Wednesdays and Sundays are pilgrimage days, and as we arrived, the parking lots were full and people were streaming out of the church. All the while we were visiting, different groups could be seen coming and going, some with guides.
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| This is one impressive basilica! |
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| the statue on the top of the spire |
As in all churches we visit, I feel transported to a spiritual place, a calming sense of just being. I often have a few little prayers to lift up before taking in the beauty and faith of those who made this place of worship.
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| Many pilgrims lit candles today. |
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| the nave |
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| the altar |
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| Many banners stood in the church. These are carried in processions and celebrations. The embroidery and hand work on these is amazing. |
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| This sign under the altar says: Pray for peace in Ukraine. |
You are asked to exit by behind the church into the cloister (built in 17th century by the Carmelites), built in granite. It will last another 500 years without aging, me thinks.
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| the chapel in the cloister |
Within the cloister is a chapel which was being prepared for mass.
As you leave the cloister, there is a monument to the side of the parvis of St Anne's. It's huge. On approaching, we learned that it is a war memorial to the 240,000 Bretons who gave their lives in WWI.
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| entrance to the memorial - carvings below are on right and left sides of the door |
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| This is in Breton, so I can't tell all the words but I see 1918, peace, children, and Brittany amongst the words - anyway, in this carving Brittany is holding olive branches |
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| In French: Brittany to her children victory 1914 - in this carving Brittany is holding a sword and shield |
A doorway leads down a few steps to a sanctuary with an altar for each of the 5 dioceses of Brittany and (for me) a heart-stopping tableau of 2 burials (staged, no bodies).
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| "battlefield graves" of a Breton soldier and a Breton sailor |
Outside, the walls surrounding this site list thousands of names of Breton soldiers lost in the war, by region and city.
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| names of Bretons who lost their lives in the war |
How anyone could not be moved by the desolation of war is beyond me. A particularly poignant carving inside the memorial says simply: Make peace. Why can't we do this simple thing?
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| This carving says it all: Make peace |
As we returned to or car, we saw one more monumental something. It looks like there may be a statue of St. Anne at the top of a set of stairs. But no explanation. When I got home, I searched and found this is called "la scala santa" The holy stairs. Apparently, pilgrims climb the steps on their knees, praying to St. Anne. at the top.
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| la scala santa |
And some beautiful flowers growing along the path on my way back to the car.
Home by 6 pm we had small apéros while preparing salmon for dinner. We had a bottle of muscadet which is grown just east of here. Tasty, dry, and fruity. Went well with salmon.
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| dinner - salmon, roasted potatoes, ratatouille and muscadet wine |
It's a beautiful evening for sitting in the garden with a glass of wine, which is all the energy we can muster for tonight. Tomorrow, we're going to the end of France - Point de Raz at the far western end of this part of Brittany. So we're going to bed early for a planned 8:30 breakfast.
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