Tuesday, August 14
Long walk with Beau in Rennes—great section historique, with winding cobblestone streets and narrow townhouses with traditional wood-and-stucco upper stories that characterize the local architecture, the wood having been plentiful in the surrounding forests when the place was building up in the 16th Century.
Consulted my maps and set out to find the ancient moulin-à-eau, or water mill, which Andrew had found in a magazine featuring properties for sale by owners. It was formerly a hotel-restaurant, with 5 guestrooms and an apartment in two connected houses. (That’s how miserable JC and his tenant have made our lives—we’re looking for other places to live.)
It took awhile for me to get my bearings, but by getting lost you can find things, even in this rain. The countryside is green—green—GREEN, and no wonder. Everything is soaking wet. The car smells of wet dog. My socks are drenched and my feet slide around in my wet Crocs.
I pulled into Vieux Vy, where the moulin is located—a dreary little crossroads with a few ugly grey buildings. Just outside, on the route touristique along the Cousenon river, you come around a bend and you can see the moulin below, with the little silver river meandering toward it through fields of green dotted with cream-colored cows. It’s a breathtaking bucolic vision.
Up close, the place looks in need of a lot of repair, and just beyond it is a development Andrew and I would call ‘Tim Town’ because it’s a development of cheesy new prefab dwellings our former trainer would have admired.
And, as I talked to Andrew on my portable, looking at the moulin from the road, it became obvious that, lacking sunlight and all colors except grey and green, this place would suck for painting—either groups of students or for Andrew’s work.
That’s OK, though. I enjoyed the mission of finding it and photographing it, and verifying that it was unsuitable for us, outside of the fact that we wouldn’t be able to pay half a million Euros for it—or anything else for that matter.
Now it was afternoon and time to check out the next campsite I’d found, about 30 minutes from Mont St Michel and the northern coast of Brittany. The site was fine, but I asked about the weather—rain for the next two days, and all they had available were tent sites. I decided to move on.