2CV Road trip (part II)

So where were we?  Oh yes, I had decided that the very thing our 10 year anniversary needed was a weekend away in my 2CV.

So bright and early Saturday morning we arose, waved off the children, packed the picnic hamper and startled a traquil neighbourhood with the cough, splutter and rattle that so defines a 2CV engine.  We were off.

In front of Evaux abbey.

Our first stop was a short hop from home.  We went to the spa town of Evaux les Bains, it has an amazing abbey that we like wandering round.  As we drove up we discovered that we weren't the only road trippers there that day as a rally of jaguars, porsches, and other expensive old cars we following us.  Proudly we discovered that my little car made more noise than any of them.

After a coffee in the appropriatly named 'Ralley" bistro we began thinking about lunch.  The plan had been to stop by some waterfalls but when we neared the (very narrow and winding) track that led to them we saw that someone had put up a warning sign that they were shooting with live rounds.  I was all for going on anyway as it is a public right of way and they had no right to stop us and so on, but husband pointed out that it would be awfully difficult to convince anybody that after they shot us.  So we left. Now we were off the plan we needed to find a picnic spot without google.  Or Satnav.  Or any kind of mobile phone network.   We decided to go old school and follow signs.  We had seen a sign telling us that there was a chapel to visit.  But we ignored it.  At another cross roads another sign insisted that the chapel could be visited by taking that road too.  We wanted our picnic not a chapel.  We perisited in ignoring the sign.  At the third turn off the road looked a little wider and once more there was a sign informing us that the chapel would be reached from this turn also.  It was obviously fate telling us that we must visit this chapel and that there we would find a heavenly picnic spot.  We wound round tiny corners.  Drove through farm yards and avoided dogs.  And there was the chapel.

The sun fell through the stained glass windows like a beam from heaven and the silence was broken by a host of angels.  Is what I would have liked to write.  It didn't happen.  The chapel was shut.
Luckily Chérérailles just down the road was more capable of offering us a beautiful picnic spot with lake, forest and not another soul in the world.

After dinner in need of culture to go with nature we stopped at Moutier d'Ahun.  A tiny village but with the most amazing wooden sculptures.  These statues were scultped between 1673 and 1681 and they are truly breathtaking.  It's a tiny village and only a small portion of the monastry is left BUT the wood carvings have survived and in such a small place they are incredible.

We spent the night at Peyrat le Chateau overlooking the lake and awoke to this view from our bedroom window.  It was a Sunday and we were in the Creuse so we were not going to be shopping today.  It was time to see the best that Creuse has to offer, prettyness, wateralls, nature, stone bridges and all that jazz.  We drove and walked and climbed and admired, and picniced.  Obviously.  Here are a few of the pictures but they don't do it justice.  

Our last stop was the village of Masgot where the local stonemason went crazy in the 19th century and decorated all the village (and his vegetable garden) with stone stautes.  It was dinner time when we arrived and the place was deserted.  We had the village to ourselves.  It is more of a hamlet and surrounded by a forest  - but not a dark dense forest, more like fields of trees and pathways leading into it from all over the village.  It was very peaceful and easy to slip back a few centuries.

So there you go.  We made it. And enjoyed it!  I am looking forward to the next one and in the meantime I have my other "deux chevaux" to keep me busy.