Motor Museum, Gacilly, Rochefort

Did three quiet things today. We had a late start, owing to have to do a mega-post to the blog from yesterday, but that turned out for the best as the weather started horrible and steadily improved all day. We drove to the town of Loheac to visit the Musée de l'Automobile, which Marian kindly included in the plan as a "guy thing" for David.

It proved to be a large museum with strong collections of the major European makes, especially of course the French ones, and lots of competition cars.

The 1899 De Dion Bouton is the oldest in the collection.

1936 Peugeot Eclipse, note the headlights behind the grill.

Twenty formula-one cars lined up as if to start a race.

After a good browse and a good lunch at the local crêperie, we went on to the town of Gacilly, where we hoped to visit the studio of the sculptor Jean Lemonnier, whose work we had much admired at the nautical museum in Paimpol. The town turned out to be a pleasant surprise; it is full of artist studios. A photographer had a big outdoor exhibit going, but there were also studios of painters, potters, glass-blowers etc, all arranged along an inviting little alley.

Weir on the river Aff; large wall of photos in the left background.

Inviting alley of studios.

Unfortunately Lemonnier's studio was closed. No indication of why or for how long.

Marian checks it out.

At least we could see a few price tags on objects in the window, which told us that he was out of our league for shopping, at least for now. The little bronze bird in the middle, top shelf? €4000. We did enjoy his Fontaine aux Oiseaux in the village square, though.

 

Lastly we drove a few kilometers to the town of Rochefort-en-Terre, because it was supposed to be charming and had a view from the local Château. It was charming, if a bit over-touristed (for some reason, an awful lot of English-speakers roaming the streets here).

 

Central Rochefort

The Château did not provide any good views, contra the guidebook, but it had some pretty features anyway.

Pretty alley of trees.

An old wall that showed several different eras of building and remodeling.

Rose climbing on old stone wall.

Sipping café cremes we agreed that we were both good and ready for this trip to be over. Tomorrow we turn in our faithful Clio, then do a little more estuary-art hunting using public transit. We might or might not have time to blog the result of that.

At 6am Saturday our train leaves Nantes for CDG. We might or might not have time to post something from the airport. Ten hours later, but still Saturday, we'll be at SFO.

Early next week we'll post a bit of wrap-up commentary about Brittany, Normandy, and France in general. Thank you all for following along, it has increased our pleasure to know that other people are enjoying it with us.