On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Winter Wren
Starting the last week of May in 2015, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to take a six week family trip to Europe. We spent the first week vacationing in the Loire valley visiting the many chateaux and a final week vacationing in Rome. In between, we stayed for a month at a gite near the hamlet of Neuvy-au-Houlme outside of Falaise in Normandy. The gite was an apartment above a barn on an estate that raised show jumping horses.
We took day trips over long weekends to various nearby sights such as the Normandy Beaches, Mont St Michel, Bayeux, Etretat, Giverny, St. Malo and Paris. During the weekdays, we spent the morning closer to the gite and the afternoon and evening working remotely. We rented bikes and I spent many mornings biking through the countryside before lunch and work. Other mornings we would drive into Falaise to visit the market, shops, cathedral or castle. Following are some scenes from the local countryside and Falaise.
The countryside was dominated by large cultivated fields of grains, legumes and hay along with apple orchards and pastures. Small hamlets like Neuvy-au-Houlme are interspersed throughout. Here is a field of some sort of grain on a bright day of sunshine – perfect for a bike ride.
Another field with a lonely looking stone outbuilding – typical building material in this region.
I thought this church with the field of poppies and other flowers was quite striking. It has been the background photo on my phone since I took it.
This is the nearby market town of Putanges on the Orne river. Many mornings we would visit the boulangerie here when it opened to get fresh croissants and baguettes for the day. Yum!
There were some interesting Neolithic sites nearby. One was a menhir (standing stone) near the Orne river; another was this site – the “Dolmen des Bignes”, both dating back millenia. Apparently this was a burial chamber complex.
On the road side was this inviting byway next to the Orne leading to a 12th century chapel in the middle of the woods.
Here is the outside of the chapel in the middle of the woods. Totally unattended, unlocked and we were the only people visiting at this time.
There was no electricity or lights and the interior was very dark. But a flash camera illuminated the interior beauty of the chapel.
Not sure of the name of this small hamlet. Most of the hamlets had a small central area with a church and some monument or marker stone about World War II battlefield history or casualties. In this one, there is a plaque about an RAF serviceman.
The church of Saint Gervais in the center of Falaise was commissioned by William the Conqueror and severely damaged by bombing in World War II and subsequently rebuilt. Around the church were various historical plaques detailing the damage and fighting around Falaise during the war.
There was fascinating history all around in Normandy from prehistoric to medieval to modern times.
guachi
I’ll be virtually visiting France watching the Tour de France Stage 17 and the cyclists riding up Superdévoluy, a mountain in South France south of Grenoble. Should be a great stage!
Lapassionara
Lovely photos. Thanks for sharing.
Trivia Man
Modern technology allows so many opportunities. Fresh baguette in the morning, bike ride to a 12 century church in the woods, then home to a barn with fancy ponies where you dial in to work “in” an office 5,000 km away.
Delightful story today, thank you
Betty
What a charming place to spend time.
Winter Wren
@guachi: I visited Grenoble once on a business trip right before Covid – it is a beautiful area and you can also try out the local Chartreuse liqueur! Enjoy.
Winter Wren
@Trivia Man: Yes, indeed. Definitely fortunate to live in a time with such opportunities.
Tenar Arha
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing!
stinger
How lovely and peaceful! You must have had a wonderful six weeks!
oldster
Years ago we took the kids to the Normandy area, and went through Falaise.
History buffs will remember this as the location of a famous tank-battle in WWII, and when we were there we saw a small monument to the battle, which included an original Sherman.
It was quiet that day, but there was another pair of visitors, a young man escorting an old man who turned out to be part of a Free Polish group of tankers that fought on the Allied side in that battle. An old man who had been younger in ’44.
My son at the time was… maybe 6? maybe 8? … and very thrilled to see a real tank. We looked It over carefully, and he noticed that the belly hatch was not installed. He was able to crawl under and then up into the tank, and that was an even bigger thrill — actually being inside a Sherman.
I grew old, too, just like that Polish hero of WWII, and I never did anything heroic. I was lucky that way.
Layer8Problem
@oldster: The battle where afterward the Canadian engineers saw how hard and painfully the Poles had fought and what devastation the Germans took from them. The engineers put up a sign that just said “A Polish battlefield.”
There go two miscreants
Nice! That second picture could be a Hopper painting; he did a fair number of lonely buildings like that.
OzarkHillbilly
Nice pics and narration. Thanx WW.
oldster
@There go two miscreants:
Hopper or Andrew Wyeth — the long sweep of grass in front calls up “Christina’s World.”
Winter Wren
@oldster: Nice memory – thanks for sharing.
MelissaM
Oh, this looks like a lovely trip. I enjoy staying in a place and getting to know the rhythm.
mvr
@There go two miscreants: I was going to say that several of the photos felt like European paintings from an earlier era. But I can see the Hopper angle as well.
Thanks for these photos. The month in the countryside sounds like a restful way to vacation.
way2blue
What a lovely place for a family holiday.
After my first year in college, my roommate & I traveled France with train passes & hostel cards. In Normandy we decided to ride bikes to Mont St Michel along narrow country lanes Well, we made it to the shore facing the island, but had run out of time… Sent the bikes back on the train and hitchhiked back to the hostel. Picked up by a young West Berlin guy in an old VW bug. Who described to us the weirdness of East Berlin trains traveling through West Berlin w/o stopping. Thanks Winter Wren for triggering that memory!
Steve in the ATL
C’est formidable!
@oldster: I’ve mentioned this before, but I know that some people here don’t keep a catalog of all my posts. My old man’s college roommate was Polish. His father was the mayor of Warsaw during WW2 so he grew up in under the Nazi occupation. He wrote a book about his experiences which I read when I was 12 or so. Powerful stuff.
Winter Wren
@way2blue: Mont St Michel was so awesome, we went twice (with different family members that were on different visiting schedules). I hope you were able to actually get on the island at some point!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
Lovely, evocative photos. Did the sign for the 12th century church reference a picnic?? I must be mistranslating, but that’s sure what it looks like!
Albatrossity
Yes, Falaise was the scene of some intense fighting in WWII; I suspect many of those buildings were damaged and reconstructed. An elderly colleague of mine was put out of action near there, not by German bullets but by an Allied P-38 that strafed his unit as they were advancing toward the front. Friendly fire is a ridiculous euphemism; there ain’t nothing friendly about it!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I just looked up “aire” and it means area, so yes, I’m guessing the sign says “picnic area” :-)
Winter Wren
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Yes, there was a picnic spot on the river on the way to the chapel. It still boggles my mind about the presumption of trust about visitors entering and respecting the unattended chapel.
Yutsano
Wow. (One of) My native country has some stark beauty to it. I still need to get over there one of these days.
WeimarGerman
@Winter Wren: this is still rather common throughout less urban areas in Europe. My mother’s childhood home is adjacent to a 13th century church some of which dates to the 15th century due to fires and rebuilding.
In my many visits there its never been closed despite it’s significance.
Winter Wren
@WeimarGerman: Great to hear. Neat looking church at your link – had never heard of Saint Cyriak. So many “minor” saints with their own stories and associated churches scattered throughout the countryside.