Lundi le 22 decembre-Chateau + St Jean de Bruel

Another fantastically clear and warm day – probably 20 degrees. The girls found a badminton set so we played this for a few hours. We went for a ‘big’ walk around our Hamlet! We then followed a marker post “Chateau” and it led us to the remains of what I am sure, would have been a lovely chateau hundreds of years ago! There really was hardly anything left!
The story goes that a beautiful girl lived there in the 13th century! 3 brothers fell in love with her – she couldn’t decide who to marry so set them off on their crusades and would marry the most valiant brother on his return. However she died before they returned – the brothers vowed to become hermits and finish their lives on 3 hilltops in the area. They agreed to communicate yearly on a pre-arranged day by means of a large fire. One by one the brothers died and so did the fires!

Then Nev and the girls decided to go to on one of the tracks to walk through the forest to reach the village St Jean de Bruel. I was instructed to drive down the mountain to pick them up as they didn’t want to walk back up the mountain! This suited me to do my first driving on my own with no witnesses! I also wasn’t too keen in case we met a local resident – snake! Not sure if there would be any but we certainly are in terrain where I reckon there would be some and especially today be out sunning themselves! I, of course hadn’t mentioned this to the others – but Seph suddenly on the way to town asked Nev if there would be any snakes or wolves!
I travelled to town with no hiccoughs – I took my book to wait in the sun for the trampers to arrive! Time went on and I was starting to wonder if they had got lost – I was trying to work out what I would do when they appeared! Nev hadn’t read the instructions in the house and had gone the wrong way for a while! Went for a drive around the other small villages and then home. Zoomed in as much as *I could on the camera - A village down the valley!