Rolling, rolling, rolling..

We had a fairly leisurely start to the day as our train didn’t leave Gare du Montparnasse until 11am so we had time for breakfast at our favourite croissantery (our own word) before packing up and checking out.  All very easy getting to Montparnasse as we are old hands at the Metro by now but we were really glad we had left plenty of time when we go to Gare du Montparnasse as it was HUGE and took us ages to work our way through, find the right level, find where to print out our reserved tickets and validate them and then find the right platform.  Had time to do all that and still sit and relax and grab something to eat for the journey.  Jumped on our TGV and then sped across western France.  The train goes so quickly that it is hard to focus on anything out of the windows and probably didn’t help that we were in the backwards facing seats.  There was occasional glimpses of little villages and chateaus and churches on distant hillsides but for the most part all we saw was lots of crops and fields of cows and quite a few wind turbines which seem to be popular over here. 

The train was right on time and we pulled into Vitre at 1pm.   We were slightly dismayed to see no taxis in sight of the station and the tourist office closed until 2.30pm and that there was nowhere we could leave our suitcases in order to explore the picturesque streets of Vitre,  so decided to sit in the sun and have lunch at a boulangerie (yummy chicken and salad baguettes) and ask the cafe owners how to get a taxi.  Unfortunately our French and her English weren’t up to the task so we headed back to the train station and the nice lady selling tickets rang for a taxi for us which promptly turned up a couple of minutes later.  Arrived at the Europcar depot where we were met with one mechanic with no English and no idea why we were there.  Waved our reservation confirmation at him and he promptly jumped on the phone to (we assume) the boss who arrived about 5 minutes later.  It seemed pretty obvious by then that we weren’t expected and they didn’t have a car ready for us but ‘the boss’ rang head office and did all our details over the phone and eventually dug out a booking sheet which we filled in together (he did the French bits, we did the English bits).  Meanwhile Manuel the Mechanic rustled up an Opel Corsa for us and so we were eventually on our way.  Took the back roads to Fougeres in order to give Larry a chance to work out the car without too much traffic to stress over and in no time at all we were in the town centre.  Found a big carpark and walked to the tourist office for a badly needed toilet break and a map of the walk route to the chateau and back.  I was a bit shocked that after my efforts at asking for the toilet in French and following her instructions, the tourist office lady thought I could actually speak and understand everything in French when we asked for a map.   When I eventually asked for Anglais she asked if we were English and when we said Australian she said they had heaps of Australians in lately and asked why.  We headed off on the scenic route down to the chateau through the pretty gardens.  It was gardening day and the steep paths were strewn with hedge clippings so it was a mix of having to watch your footing and look at the amazing views down the chateau.  Spared a thought for Margaret who only a couple of months ago was here trudging up the same hill in much warmer weather (about 16 degrees here today).  Hardly anyone about at all which was such a stark contrast after the busy footpaths of Paris.  On some occasions we had a whole street to ourselves!!  Decided not to actually go into the chateau but sat on a bench outside it where we could admire the huge impenetrable walls while we had TIC and then headed back to the car.  Dug Kevin (GPS) out of the suitcase and programmed in Avranches and we started off well enough before he froze in fright and left us sitting at a roundabout with no idea where to go.  Eventually gave up on him and just followed the signs to Avranches instead.  Ended up on the motorway so only took about 10 minutes (after 20 minutes of going around Fougeres after Kevin got us lost) and found our hotel in Avranches fairly easily (but more by good luck than good management).  Light drizzly rain had started so we were happy to collapse on the bed for an hour or so and update blogs, watch telly etc before going up to the well reputed restaurant for dinner.