Fougères en Bretagne et sa forteresse médiévale

Imagine you were spending some time touring around in the Perche region and towns including Mortagne, Bellême, Nogent-le-Rotrou, Sées and Alençon. If you decided you wanted to do a day trip, one good destination would be the town of Fougères (pop. 20,000) on the eastern edge of Brittany. It takes two hours or so to get there, but the drive is through beautiful green countryside and there are stops like the hilltop village Domfront along the way that would make a good place to have lunch. Fougères itself is the site of one of Europe's most imposing fortified châteaux. The château complex occupies five acres of land and included 13 towers. It was built between the 12th and 15th centuries.

The first château de Fougères was destroyed in 1166 when Henri II Plantagenêt laid siege to it and left it in ruins. It was re-built soon after, however, starting in 1176. It was given to Diane de Poitiers by the French king Henri II in 1547. And the novelist Honoré de Balzac spent time there in the 19th century. Fougères is only about 45 minutes by car from the Mont Saint-Michel.

Pictures taken at Sées cathedral in 2006

Inside and outside views of the cathedral at Sées

French Wikipédia says the first cathedral in Sées was built in the year 440 A.D. It was a much smaller structure than the cathedral that exists today and that was built in the 13th century — about a thousand years later. That earliest cathedral in Sées was heavily damaged during the Viking invasions of the 8th and 9th centuries and replaced by a more imposing building in the 11th century. That building didn't stand for long. A fire weakened its structure and it collapsed less than a century later. Another cathedral was built in the 12th century but it too was destroyed by fire.

Today's cathedral was built starting in about the year 1200. In their rush, the builders didn't lay a solid foundation for the structure, which was consecrated in the year 1310. It suffered major damage during the 100 Years' War and had to be repaired and re-consecrated at the end of the 15th century. In the 16th century the west front of the church was leaning precariously and was in danger of collapsing It had to be shored up by the construction of buttresses to keep it standing. More buttresses had to be added in the 18th century. Finally, major restoration and consolidation work in the 19th century stabilized the building and what we see today dates mostly back to that time.

Sées et sa cathédrale

I have to say I had never heard of the cathedral city of Sées (pronounced [say]; pop. 4,000) before I went there with my late friend Charles-Henry in June 2001, on our drive from Rouen to Vouvray. Walt and I went back in June 2006 with our friend Sue from California, when we were driving from Saint-Aignan to the Mont Saint-Michel. And I went back when I was in the Perche region with Evelyn, Lewis, and Marie-Jacques in August 2011.

Deux bons résultats

Some bullet points today, covering the week's news.

• We had a couple of small victories this past week. The first had to do with our 24-year-old Peugeot 206 "runabout" car. I love the car and will hate to have to give it up one day. It's a lot of trouble to go out and find another quality used car to buy. (I can't justify the expense of a new car.) Anyway, I dreaded having to take the Peugeot in for its bi-annual inspection this month. I decided not to have anything, not even an oil change, done to the car before its contrôle technique (technical inspection or MOT), which is a very detailed and thorough inspection required by the government. If the technician found problems, I'd have four months to get them fixed. I took it in for inspection on Monday morning. Well, once again the car passed inspection with flying colors. Now I'll have to have our other car (a Citroën C4) inspected before mid-December. I'll probably do the same thing with that one. Just take it in and hope for the best.
  

• On Wednesday I had my final appointment with the ophthalmologist who performed cataract surgery on my eyes in June and in September. He said everything has healed now and he judged the results of the operation to be good. He had me do the standard eye test — read the letters, you know. I told him again that I was a little bit disappointed that the vision in my right eye, the weak one, wasn't better. The left eye is great. He said new corrective lenses would take care of the right-eye problem. I was skeptical. He tested me again, showing me the vision I would have with that eye once I got the new prescription and new glasses. We ran through 6 or 7 different lenses without any good results. Then he tried one final lens and voilà ! suddenly I could see the letters clearly. Now I'm optimistic that my vision compared to what it was six months ago will soon be far better, once I get the new lenses and glasses from an optical shop.

 Now it's time to get into the kitchen and cook that cauliflower for lunch.

La saison des choux

Yesterday I went to the supermarket (Intermarché in Noyers-sur-Cher). I bought, among other items, a cauliflower. 'Tis the season. It was beautiful and was on sale for just two euros per head. Last week, at another supermarket, I saw heads of cauliflower (chou-fleur) that weren't as nearly as pretty selling for 3.69 euros apiece, so I figure I got a bargain. I'll make a gratin de chou-fleur tomorrow, using smoked pork lardons, Comté cheese (an Alpine or "Swiss" cheese made in eastern France), and a béchamel sauce. And don't forget, you can cook and eat the green leaves of the cauliflower the way you would cook and serve other greens.

Yesterday at Intermarché I also bought two kilograms (nearly five pounds) of raw sauerkraut (choucroute crue; good luck pronouncing that). It's also available pre-cooked, but I prefer to cook it myself, with onions, carrots, bay leaves, duck fat, white wine, smoked chicken, smoked sausages, and thick slices of smoked bacon. Sauerkraut is made from heads of chou blanc (white cabbage) that has been cut into strips and fermented in salt water. The soaking makes it much easier to digest than cabbage that has not undergone fermentation.

I've posted about choucroute many times before; for example here. The two kilos of choucroute was a bucket full, as you can see, and the raw kraut fit in two large containers that will go into the freezer. Notice the label and the information it gives, the most important being the ingredients: Chou, sel. No additives. To reduce the amount of salt in the finished dish, rinse the raw choucroute well in cold water before you cook it.

Le château Saint-Jean à Nogent-le-Rotrou

Nogent-le-Rotou is one of three towns that claims to be the capital of the Perche region; the other two are Bellême and Mortagne-au-Perche, which I've been blogging about for a few days. Charles-Henry (my late Parisian friend) and I had lunch in Nogent on our way to Alençon in June 2015. Besides having lunch there, we made it a point to go see the château Saint-Jean, built on a spur of rock above the town.

The town of Nogent was burned by order of the French king Charles VII in the year 1449, during the 100 Years' War, to keep it from being captured by the English and used as a base of operations in that war. That's what the Micheline Green guidebook says. The town was rapidly rebuilt when the war ended, according to Michelin.

The Rotrous were the Counts of the Perche region. They lived in the château Saint-Jean, the oldest parts of which date back to the 10th century A.D. Back then, the Perche was border land separating the territories of the French kings to the south and the territories of the Dukes of Normandy to the north. The first prominent member of the Rotrou family died in the year 996, Wikipédia says.

The château was heavily damaged by German bombardments in June 1940. German forces occupied it until August 1944, when it was re-taken by the French.

Les manoirs du Perche

I read somewhere that at one time there were 700 manoirs (manor houses, small châteaux) in the Perche region of France. Many were built starting at the end of the 100 Years' War (late 1400s) and continuing into the 1600s or later. Today, just 100 remain standing. Charles-Henry and I saw a few of them. We were on our way to Alençon to see an old friend of his whose name is also Charles-Henry and who owns a château that now is run as a hotel.

The two just above below are ones I took at the Manoir de Courboyer, near the big town of Nogent-le-Rotrou. It's probably the most famous of all the manoirs du Perche.

Le Perche on a rainy day in May

Le Perche is classified as a région naturelle in France, as are, for example, la Sologne and la Brenne, both of which are closer to Saint-Aignan. Le Perche is known not for wine, but for horses and manor houses. Since it's in Normandy, I suppose it is also known for rain. I looked it up — the region gets about 100 millimeters more precipitation annually than the Saint-Aignan area gets.

That's about four inches, which might not seem significant... but when you consider that the rain falls mostly as mist or drizzle, it means that a lot more days are gris and triste in le Perche than in la Touraine. That's why we decided not to go live in Normandy back in 2002, when we were getting ready to pick up and move to France from San Francisco, which is also known for drizzle, mist, and fog.

You have to admit that all that light rain makes le Perche very green. Above is the town of Bellême seen from the road that runs through the region. My late friend Charles-Henry I were driving from Paris to the big town Alençon on a rainy May day in 2015. It takes about two hours if you don't do too much sight-seeing. More tomorrow...

The streets and houses of Bellême

The streets and houses of Bellême are very different from the streets and houses of Mortagne.
The two towns are just 20 minutes apart by car.