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Published: March 10th 2016
Our usual quota of sleep is around 7 hours and so we were pretty well on the button when we both woke just after 3am ready to start the day.....except it was still very dark outside.
Thankfully we both managed to get back to sleep eventually and hopefully tonight our body clocks will give us our usual quota although we won’t venture off to bed so early.
Being in the far west of the time zone the light in the eastern sky took longer than we anticipated bringing about daylight and allowing us to observe our surroundings.
Our accommodation is not quite like what we expected although when we consider the name of ‘Parc Residence’ we should have realised that this place is really long term apartments occupied by people that work in the area somewhere and that there are a small number of apartments that are let out to tourists such as ourselves. It is clean and well equipped, except for knives (lucky we bought two of own along).The bathroom with the ‘wet floor ‘is interesting as the builder made the floor too flat for the water to run back to the waste drain necessitating the use
of a squidgy scraper on the end of a long broom like handle to sweep the surplus water after one has taken a shower, down the waste drain.
Although it was raining as we got up to start the day the sky cleared from the east as we had breakfast and it looked like the day wouldn’t be too bad after all for sightseeing. The test was poking ones head outside to see how cold it was. After yesterdays shock to the system when we exited CDG Airport and got a taste of real air (we had been in air conditioning since leaving Auckland) we didn’t expect not to have to wear several layers of clothing. And so it was to be to keep out the almost bitter chill even when the sun tried to shine.
Thankfully the breeze dropped making the cold a little more bearable but going from the high 20’s in Tauranga for the last few months to somewhere between 5C and 10C is going to take some adjusting to.
With not a lot of exercise over the past two days we took a stroll through the village of Cintray which is virtually all
on the one road. The only occupants appeared to be dogs seemingly ready to get at us except for fences keeping them in their own property. Then we came across a woman waiting for a bus and that gave some reassurance that there were humans living in the 20 or so similar looking houses that made up the village. Then in the near distance we heard the sounds of hammers and we spied a new home being built. It seems everyone here builds to virtually the same design as their neighbour.
The largest building in the village was the church. An imposing structure that very old but oddly had a relatively new spire. Perhaps the previous one had come down in a storm. The new one looked out of style with the rest of the building.
Heading back to the car park of our accommodation we passed sheep in a paddock with a young lamb. We had seen few animals in the fields yesterday as we drove here from Paris so we guess most are still indoors in their barns waiting for warmer weather to arrive.
By now it was almost lunchtime and we needed to get
on with our plan to visit Lisieux, a town renown as the second most visited pilgrimage site in France and the home of Saint Therese.
The drive took across in a generally western track towards the Normandy coast.
The sky at the start of our drive was still partly fine although as we travelled on through small village after small village light rain started to fall which was not encouraging to stop to get out and explore one or two of the traditional Normandy villages. However we admired the very old timbered buildings with the occasional thatched roof and wondered just warm some of them would be inside considering the outside temperature was registering only 6C and there didn’t seem to be any open fires going in most of the houses.
By the time we reached Lisieux we were well ready for lunch and rather than testing our French in one of the many bars we walked past in the town we opted for Subway and a ½ foot roll and coffee. The young woman that served us spoke good English and even her boss got in talking to a couple of Kiwis explaining that the site
of the store had once been the home of Saint Therese before she became a nun.
St Peters Cathedral was a few metres away and as the light rain continued we took refuge to go through the history of Saint Therese in an exhibition that ran both sides of the cathedral which was built during the end of the 12
th century.
The building was imposing in size and rather austere unlike many cathedrals we have seen in our travels and it looked like it was in need of some upkeep.
We then followed the tourist trail that takes one past a couple of other keys places where Saint Therese lived or spent her time as a nun and then up the hill to the very impressive Basilica.
There were few pilgrims visiting on this drizzly, rainy day although you could vast numbers inside the building which seemed out of proportion with a town the size of Lisieux.
The outside construction was the usual grey stone but inside much of the interior figures were of mosaic tiles.
The construction period for the Basilica was between 1929 and 1954 so it was just a youngster compared
to St Peters down the ill. It was here where the Pope had celebrated the life of Saint Therese.
It was getting on in the day and we had hoped we might get in a walk around the very old buildings in the town of Verneuil-sur-Avre which was founded in 1120.
On the way south we passed through the town of Vimoutiers which had seen some fierce fighting following the Normandy landings in WW2.
The drizzle had been off and on during our drive through more undulating countryside than we had experienced earlier in the day but the light had started to fade so we decided to keep the walk around the town until Friday when we head to the Cotentin peninsula and next accommodation.
Some more supermarket shopping and we were home to have dinner.
However before we could get to cook dinner we were thrown another challenge of the electronics of the car. Despite seemingly locking the car successfully using the automatic locking device the door opened when we tried to check that the lock had been made.
A search of the 400 page online manual didn’t throw any light on what
the problem was and as it was now extremely cold outside we decided that there was little else we could do but leave ‘Peggy’(yes ,our vehicle now has a name)as she was, apparently locked unless someone tried the door handle.
And hopefully she will still be there in the morning!
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