The Easter Island of Brittany

It has taken Jake and I a bit of time to get acclimated to our new surroundings and get on the local time zone. After nearly a week, we are still feeling the tail-end of travel exhaustion and jet lag.

Despite that, we are already finding our rhythm out here. We walk between 7-10 miles every day which includes our running workouts, walking the Meeka dog and doing daily chores and errands around the chalet. We've also been doing LOADS of cooking, more than we did in normal life. The food quality here is some of the best we've ever had and that sparks the creativity bug...for Jake its all about bread, croissants, and pizza dough. For me its savory food. We indulge in a lot of English smut on the tele; specifically dating shows and cooking shows [we adore the English accent!]. And we've even had some fun wild animal encounters to spice up our lives including:

1. Boars have been roaming around the compost pile and the little river flowing beside the house. We've seen their sign and Jake thinks he saw them on a morning run. 2. A French version of the 'Chupacabra,' which has made its appearance a few times, only in the early morning hours. Its some sort of hybrid of fox, deer and cat with skinny legs and no tail. 3. A full-fledged bat somehow managed to fly into the living room (maybe from the chimney?); that was some fun pre-bedtime-entertainment. Luckily it was still a bit light outside so we managed to funnel him to the door and out on his merry way...

We also felt ready to take on more of Brittany than our little bubble. Brittany is in Northwestern part of the country [aka Bretagne], and much of it is covered in rolling lowlands that are perfect for agriculture; hence all the crops and cows! People tend to visit the coastal regions, which makes for a far less crowded and busy nature for the rest. We've also come to learn that there is a wealth of historic architecture in and around this area of France, encompassed in stone. If you know Jake or myself, you know we love our rocks, especially climbing them! ;) So, I have to warn you to be prepared for massive amounts of stone-and-rock-covered things, because the next several blogs are going to be FULL of them.

The first rocky-adventure features our favorite; GRANITE. High on a sloping hillside in Carnoët (Côtes d'Armor) there is a large-scale project underway. Beginning in 2008, a philosopher conceived an idea to create France's version of Easter Island. If you aren't familiar, Easter Island lies well off the coast of Chile and is famous for the moai statutes, monolithic human figures carved around the 13th century.

Brittany's Easter Island is called La Vallée des Saints or The Valley of Saints. The goal is to cover the hillside with a thousand granite statues, each of which ~ 3 meters high. These statues represent all the Saints of Brittany (of which there are more than 7000) as a celebration of the Celtic history and of granite, itself, which is a pinnacle of the landscape and local economy.

Currently there are 100 statues erected on the hill. Funny to call it a valley, though it does overlook the gorgeous French countryside for miles in all directions. Each statue is unique and was created by a different local artist. The project is completely self-funded (through donations) and anyone can sponsor a statue. Each sculpture costs around 12,000-15,000 Euros and takes about a month to complete.

It was a hot sunny day and our only thing on the agenda was to walk around and take loads of photos. Jake packed us a really nice picnic lunch that we enjoyed under a large shady birch tree. We spent a good few hours and it never got very crowded either, which is always nice.

Every statue has a very different style. We were lucky to see some of the sculptors in action! The way it works is artists submit design to the committee for approval and funding comes from local businesses and individuals in the community. Once selected, the artist then gets to choose the location for their statue and a massive chunk of granite from which tedious process begins. We saw 3 different sculptors working on the next set of statues one in particular looked like King Triton.

There was an indoor gallery and gift shop, but all the information was in French and our lackluster language skills weren't quite enough to glean any new information. So we moved along with our day to take in some more of lovely Brittany.

The second stop on our journey was to the village of Kergrist-Moëlou, which is the teeny tiny strip of buildings and a large church at the center of it all. Our abode is technically part of this region, but we haven't yet seen the town properly.

On our way, we passed a lovely stone house (go figure) across the street from a gorgeous church next to the Nantes-Brest Canal. We made an impromptu stop and walked around to soak it all in. The church was closed but we still meandered the grounds, walked to the little bridge over the water and took loads of pics of all the flowers. Jake slipped in dog poo...when in France, am I right?

Onward we headed to the village, all the while jamming out to some pop-French music on the radio. I keep thinking that one day French will all just click in my brain!

Kergrist-Moëlou has a population of around 600 people, most of which are actually outside of the "downtown" (a stretch to use this word since its so tiny). The church is clearly the most prominent feature and this time it was wide open for us to explore. It's called Notre Dame Church (no relation to the one in Paris), dates back to 1578. There is a Cavalry sculpture just outside the church as well, decorated with almost 100 statues telling the story of the life and death of Jesus Christ. It was vandalized during the French Revolution and what is left stands on a large granite base (more granite, woo!!)

We continued our walk through the town, which was pretty much desolate besides ourselves and one other group of people. There was one store with an open sign, not exactly sure what they were selling and two workers on a roof. Most of the roofs on the buildings here are of slate-stone, which looks cool but I don't believe its very durable. It was really fun to walk around and poke into different buildings (most of which were empty).

Whew, that's a lot of stones in one blog. We certainly had loads of fun exploring and interacting with more of Brittany than we had before. Even though its overwhelming to be fully engulfed in a new culture and language, it's also super exciting and I can't wait to do more!