Cold Walks & Châteaus | Fougeres , Brittany - Exploring France

Château de Fougères

Woohoo, adventure time. We love this time of week where we get to go out into the big wide world and explore a new area of France we haven’t seen before. This week, we went to Fougères in Brittany. I haven’t been to many places in France, but so far Brittany is definitely my favourite. We started in a small car park at the bottom of the hill, our plan was to walk around the town and back down to the car. We walked through the old town, which, as does much of Brittany, has amazing half timbered houses which are now a line of restaurants. This part of town has a lovely little river running through it which was ancient tanneries back in the day. We then walked through the public gardens, which weren't great this time of year, but I' sure in the summer they are beautiful, and up the steep hill to our first point of our tour. Elise Saint - Leonard. I love a good look around a church, and this was no exception, so in I went!


Eglise Saint - Leonard

There has been a church at this site since the 12th century and was rebuilt from 1407 to 1636, yes, it took over 200 years to rebuild the church!!! It was rebuilt in order to meet the requirements of the expanding city, so it was made a lot bigger. It was then altered in the 19th century to what you can see today. It was quite simple inside but from the outside it has a dominating structure looking over the Château de Fougères.

Just down the road from the church is a unique site to most of Brittany. With only three remaining, and this being the oldest, we had to take the opportunity to visit the towns Belfry which was built in 1397. As we approached, it was in a cute little town square that had recently been used for a Christmas market. But as we got closer, we could see the Belfry now stands in someones back garden. There was no access in the Belfry but we managed to get some good views from the outside.

The towns Belfry, I'm sure there are some bats there...

We kept walking and happened upon something that was not on our tour of Fougeres. The Victor Hugo Theatre. So named as Victor Hugo gave lots of money to struggling theatres all over france, and this was one of them. It was an impressive building that stood out from the town as its architecture was severely different, a very light and bright visage compared to the external structures of the rest of the town.



Continuing through town, we were aiming for the Château which was clearly the focal point for the town. We didn't get to see inside the Château as its undergoing work over the winter as is much of the region but the outside was absolutely stunning. We walked around the whole structure!

After we had explored the town, we thought we would drive 10 minutes to some local woods. We didn’t realise until we pulled up that there was a historic monument there. The Cordon des Druides. A line of quartz stones that have been in place for nearly 6000 years! There was an eerie feeling in this place and although we could only see a handful of stones, there are infact thousands buried under the forest floor. We will definitely be returning to these woods as there is a lot more to explore there, but that's for another time…

One of the druid rocks

If you'd like to see more of these places, check out our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQEQ_feDReY

What 3 Words Parking Fougeres - erase.sneezed.stunning Parking in the woods - swirly.thornier.risks

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Location: 35133 Fougères, France

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