Adventures in France-Land, Walking VI
Posted: May 29, 2013 Filed under: Me, Travel | Tags: Blundstone, Chateaux de Biron, Edward 1er, France walking trip, Le Seguinet, Monpazier, Saint-Front-sur-Lemance 3 Comments

Castles! Our friendly postman/taxi driver, who rescued us in my last post, drove us to Chateaux de Biron.

Aha! A possible clue about our previous day’s misadventure. Occasionally you cross paths with other “GR” trails, like you see here.

Welcome to Lacapelle-Biron, home to fanatical rugby fans. Most of the town was gathered in their red and white colors. I could write an entire book on the difference between American sports fans and French sports fans based on my 10 minute observation of this event but this is a blog, not a book so I will spare you.

Go team! We start our walking for the day leaving Lacapelle-Biron and their sports traditions behind.

Note to self, call the GR trail people about the marks in this town, they sort of completely disappeared.

France provided a wonderland of contraband park equipment that our kids are very unlikely to see in the States – like see saws and unruly swings.

When you’ve gone without any toys for a couple of weeks, a broken hula hoop can provide an hour of entertainment.

Interior of Le Seguinet. I lost count of the amazing tile patterns used throughout the 18 room “house”.

The beginnings of our sun downer from our lovely Indian/Canadian/English cum French host Mme. Finnegan (funny coincidence). Â Good night Saint-Front.
Adventures in France-Land, Walking V
Posted: May 21, 2013 Filed under: Me, Travel | Tags: france, GR 36, Lou Peyrol, Monpazier, MOntferrand, traveling in Europe with kids, walking trails Leave a commentA bit of an introduction, on our fifth day of walking we mistakenly hopped off the GR 36 trail and onto another. Â It was a beautiful walk but took us 20 km AWAY from our intended destination. Â This turned out to be our longest day of walking, we figure it was over 20 km, possibly 25 km – that’s a really long way when you are five and seven years old. Â This post is dedicated to my kids who not only walked the whole day but happily put on their boots the next morning as well, thank you, I love you.

We spied this place for a mid-morning break, also to fill water bottles (walking tip: turns out cemeteries almost always have water)

Lunch break, our hosts from Lou Peyrol packed us sandwiches for the day, which we happily devoured sitting outside this castle wall.

The moment we realize we are 20 km away, it’s a hard moment, no one even cares about Chateaux Bannes in the background.

While we wait for our hotel to send a rescue car our way (miraculous), my daughter adopts several snails. (choosing snails over the chateaux, that’s my girl)