Looping NZ Style: Tiki-Touring to Ploermel and Rennes

Love these chimney pots with their fern lace frill around the bottom!

SO many times we have skirted the wonderful town of Ploermel to go somewhere else, and this time we made a determination to actually GO there. Glad we did! Look what we found!

A vibrant, busy town with lots of lovely shops, without too many vacant spaces in the middle of town, a lovely church and War Memorial in the center, that made us want to stop and sit a while, and....

I swear the gargoyle makers of the 15th century had a great sense of humor. Some of them are very funny...including this one, in my opinion....careful or we will run off with your children!!! Beware!

I knew I needed some new clothing, and this town seemed like just the place for it. The fella inside was kind of cute, for a plastic man, too! :)

The War Memorial sported this gorgeous bronze Griffin. Again, morning sun made it easy to photograph.

As I have documented before, there are many of these coq astride a German/Prussian helmet, on top of the War Memorials. I think the other thing is a flame.

A new Peugeot...My dad would have loved this car...look at the roof! Dad bought and drove 13 Peugeot in his life...he loved them. Being French made, they are everywhere, and I think of him constantly when I see them.

This building appeared to be older than all the ones next to it, in the town square. The town is on a hill, as most of the 15th century towns are.

Seeing this building, or mix of buildings, makes us ask the question...what happened to the other one!??

Lovely to see the purple shutters against the grey stone. The locals tend to paint their shutters and window frames bright colors. I would too, I think.

In this Abbaye grounds...which is also a school, library etc...stands one of only about 6 Mechanical Astronomical clocks. This one was made by a Father Bernoud, who as a math teacher, in the early 1800's sought to show his students how math actually works in the real world. It took him 5 years to build this fabulous apparatus by hand. Each of the huge number of gears is brass and hand made.

It seemed a strange place to have this.

It was remarkable, looking at it, to think that he made all of those gears by hand! it really is quite something to see in action, and we did, when the clock chimed.

It was restored in the 1970's, and well done too.

That was our morning trip. Our day was broken in two, today, because we were tasked with taking someone to the Train station in Rennes. So, our afternoon excursion was to Rennes. After dropping him off at the station, and having a Grand Crème at a nearby café, we decided to take a look around. The traffic at 4.30pm was a bit crazy...being home time, and we got on the road out of town, deciding to come again another day. We spied a parking space opposite the Vilaine River, and stopped. Phew! out of the rat race. We left the car and wandered down to the river bank to see what we could see, and have a good walk around, and along the tow path. Lots of new apartment buildings there, which was a bit weird, after seeing so many historic buildings everywhere.
This one below is on a corner facing downtown Rennes, and quite something to behold. It faces both the Vilaine River and the old town.

Having walked along the town path, crossed a few major intersections with vehicles coming at us right and left, we found some of the older quarter....only because we went off on one of our tangents! aiee! we do have some bad habits, lol. The relief on the front of this church is stunning, and unlike anything we have seen before.

...and what's down here??? Oh! a drawbridge. We forgot that Rennes is also a fortified town...well, it was! That is a former town gate, and yes, there is a working drawbridge there. There are archeologic diggings on the other side of the gate, however.

Inside all those timbers are the digs.

The drawbridge still works, apparently.

I believe this town is also 11th/13th and 15th century in it's roots. Being on the Vilaine river meant is was a major trade route.
That relief was a heraldic standard of some kind, in it's former life.

Love the detail around the top of the fortification

We returned to the old town, and spied this church with a very weird looking spire on the left. It looked boarded up and ignored. How sad! I guess it is too expensive for some towns and congregations to keep so many churches going. Makes you want to rescue a few of them.

The large doors were worth a photo, don't you think?

Again, walking alongside the river to return to our car. Such pretty late afternoon sun. We have been so fortunate with the weather on this trip.

I like things that stand out, and this surely did. Newly painted to stand out from it's very grey stone neighbors.

We were parked alongside a park, where people were doing exercise, walking their dogs, and like me, dancing with the feet!

There is a new mandate that newer high rise buildings in France have to have a certain percentage of green factored in. I liked this vertical wall of garden, don't you?