Randonnée de l'été

To celebrate the beginning of summer, our village held a randonnce de l'été last evening. Considering we've had maybe 10 days of nice springtime weather this year, we were eager to put this miserable, soggy printemps behind us and get on with summer.

The randonnée originally was planned as a 6k walk or 15k bike ride, but the day's rain necessitated shortening the event to a guided walk through and around the village. We even strolled right past chez nous!

Our guides, a lively group of university students from Bordeaux, outnumbered the participants, but that didn't matter. Despite touring the rues and paths we tread each day, we learned a few things about our sweet village. The stones making up the chateau's walls, for instance, were engraved not for decoration, but to mark each worker's progress during construction. (The marking in the rock at right, however, is a mystery.)








A hill just outside of town was once a fortress, complete with tower, village and moat, but nothing remains of the 11th century site except a pretty spot to stroll. Three chateaus can be seen from the top of the hill.






After the tour, there was a picnic at the village Halle, followed by entertainment: an hysterical one-man show performed by Lionel Rami, one of our handsome French guides. (All our guides were gorgeous ... vive la France!) Truth be told, we understood little, and our heads were spinning by the end of the 45-minute soliloquy, but when he offered to do it one more time in English for les americains, we got the joke and laughed along with everyone else.