Here's what the neighborhood looked like. I think you could call it un hameau (a hamlet). That's a settlement with its own name but no church, no mayor, and usually no shops or stores. This one did have an auto-repair shop and a meeting hall called l'assemblée (salle des fêtes or salle polyvalente are other terms for such a building). The photo above shows you the hamlet. I'm looking north sort of toward Le Puy from high ground above our gîte. After I saw the landscape from this perspective, I wanted to go up to the highlands across the way, where some of the land is forested, as you can see. And we did.
The road into the hamlet, le chemin du Riou, is a dead-end road about a kilometer (half a mile) long that runs from a main north-south highway down into a deep, narrow valley, and then up a hill on the other end of the valley. To me, it's what would be called "a hollow" in the Appalachian Mountains in America. In the first photo above, you can't actually see our gîte. But in second picture, you can see it as my camera did from across the way, from a distance of a couple of miles. The dovecote wasn't hard to spot, and our gîte was right behind it. Here's a picture of it Walt has posted.
The highlands across the way gave us a view out over the town of Le Puy (pop. less than 20,000). This what I wanted to see by going up high. From the gîte, we didn't actually have such a view. In the background, you can see the cathedral and the statue of Notre-Dame de France standing on a huge rock. I'll be posting a lot more photos of Le Puy and surrounding sights. Click on them or "unpinch" them to see them at a larger size.
I'm pretty sure that we went there where the big statue is. Pretty memorable thing :)
ReplyDeleteVichy was the town where the family friends lived, and where we stayed. We visited the old water baths / water cures spot in Vichy. Le Puy was a day trip.
That's a really long day trip. Even today, Google Maps says it takes three hours to drive from Vichy to Le Puy, and I'm sure the roads have been improved over the decades. That statue on top of the rock is definitely memorable.
DeleteWell, it's been 35 years, and I wasn't the driver, so I don't really remember everything... you know, you remember certain things, disconnected. I know we went hiking in the area with the volcanoes, and that was with the friends from Vichy, so that was probably Puy de Dôme. But, I know that just the family and I, went to La Chaise Dieu once, and went to the place with the mount and the big red statue... we may have looked at the red statue in the distance, but we walked up Le Rocher Corneille, and definitely went inside la Chapelle Saint-Michel-d'Aiguilhe. It's possible that our family went down to see these things on our own, and then stopped in Vichy for a couple of days on the way home to Paris. It was Easter vacation. (I remember the family hiding the chocolates out in the back yard, and I was supposed to take the kids for a walk to distract them, while the chocolates were being hidden, but I didn't realize that they only wanted us gone for a few minutes, so we were gone for like an hour --ha! When we got back, everyone was saying, "The chocolat is melting!"... oh these funny things that happen when you only understand 2/3 of what people say to you!). In any case, These scenes are ones that I remember.
DeleteI know what you mean about long-ago memories. Sometimes my mind has modified them, and then some piece of evidence will turn up — an old letter, an old photo — that makes me realize that I'd better be careful about relying on memory alone. Peoples' names and place names vanish into thin air. My understanding is that the Rocher Corneille is the one with the Notre-Dame de France statue on top, and the Chapelle Saint-Michel d'Aiguilhe is on the, well, aiguille. Do you remember climbing to the top of that one? Was there an elevator? At my age, I don't think I'd trying climbing stairs to the top. I remember how strenuous the climb was up the 300 or so steps to the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris a few years ago.
DeleteOn the third photo, this excellent panoramic view of Le Puy, I can see the cathedral, below that statue of N.-D. de France, and on the left, I can spot that small church, Saint-Michel-d'Aiguilhe, atop a volcanic dyke.
ReplyDeleteI keep looking, but I can't see St-Michel d'Aiguilhe in that view.
DeleteIf you follow a straight horizontal line from the cathedral to the extreme left of the photo, you'll find it almost halfway, slightly above a straight white building. To distinguish the little church you'll have to enlarge the photo. The bell tower is almost lost in greenery.
DeleteOh, yes, there it is. I have closer-up photos too, of all this.
DeleteI'm glad you had some sunshine to take these nice photos. Rolling hills make for interesting views.
ReplyDeleteWe enjoyed the stay in Le Puy. Looking back, it wasn't as rainy as weather forecasts said it would be. The gîte was great and Tasha was very well behaved.
DeleteI remember that we all walked up -- I'm sure I couldn't do that comfortably, now! The chapel was very memorable for me, going inside it.
ReplyDelete