Le Mans, forests and medieval towns...

Prisca, Eli, Luka, Lu and I explored Bellemé the next day - very quaint little village.

Some weird wall decoration outside someone's door.

The map of the surrounding area. SO MUCH HISTORY..!!!

The next day Prisca and Luka stayed home while Eli took Lu and I to la Cathédrale de Saint-Julien in Le Mans, about 45 minutes drive from Igé. Yes, the Le Mans where the infamously gruelling 24 hour endurance race is held. They were holding some festival so half the roads were closed off which made trying to work out how the hell to get AROUND half the city to try and get an easy park pretty much impossible. Roughly an hour later we managed to end up pretty much where we started from and totally gave up - French people, for such a proud civilisation are absolute idiots when it comes to road signs and directions. More on that gripe later.
Despite being retarded at directions, they know how to build cathedrals, that's for sure. Especially the Cathédrale St-Julien du Mans.

Amazing, no?

Inside, I found the models demonstrating the different phases taken over the centuries until it was completed:

This took over 400 years...

The cathedral was ENORMOUS. If you look, you'll see that it is built in the traditional cross formation.

Information about the cathedral

Staggering outside feeling a bit blown away I was presented with a medieval town. The cathedral has a wall around it and a fair bit of the surrounding estate. Here are some pictures of the visible parts left:

What can I say? The scale and enormity of the whole thing was absolutely staggering. Words just can't do it justice. What an amazing example of what man can do.

The next day I went for a walk in an old forest with Eli, Prisca and Noemie. France has GREEN forests. I know, I know, you all probably are protesting that rainforests are just as green in Australia and NZ and all but in all honesty, there's just something special about the utter greenness of France's forests. The photos are from HDR Pro so yes, they're over saturated but not THAT much, really.

 After this beautiful walk we went back, picked up Lu and went to a medieval festival in a castle in Nogent-le-Rotrou. People were dressed up in armour and all that, there were even cannons going off (which was damn loud, I nearly had an heart attack and needed to change my pants when the first one went off) and spit roasts cooking various animals. It was awesome. A old whitebeard was showing how you forged metal and banging on a red-hot stick of metal - presumably a dagger-thing - and there was heaps of medieval weapons and armour on display and for sale. Awesome as I said. I was sad to have just missed the battles between the soldiers and stuff, they started 'training' the kids and then it started raining so by the end of the afternoon when we were all ready to leave I had to give up and go without seeing some fighting. Secretly, I was hoping there would be some blood, maybe an accidental dismemberment and all that. Oh well. (Yeah, I was born in the wrong century it seems.)

 Eli and I walked up in the tower where there were exhibitions showcasing the history of the region and the castle. There was an entire floor pretty much devoted to the subject of horses and how they created children's toys and games with that theme. There was even an awesome "bike" which was like a chariot, you sat on the back seat with two wheels and the horse in front of you had one wheel with a band that you held from your seat as you pedalled and pulled on to steer to your left or right. Such a brilliant idea. There was even an old version (which is basically exactly the same as the modern version just not plastic) of the classic game:

Also presented was a model replica of the building stages:

Apologies for the awful quality - it was encased in a glass box and the room was almost pitch black...!!!

So, apparently, the French call their castles slightly differently - we call the basement or underground part of the castle a dungeon but they use this word for the highest tower of the castle.
The word dungeon comes from the French word "Donjon" which means tower. So they call the walls and grounds the castle and the tower the dungeon.
This place is Le Chateau Saint-Jean and the dungeon was built in the XIth century, then the walls built around the XII and XIIIth and the whole place was finished by the XVth century. They built things with long term vision and goals that's for sure!

Next, I go to the Salt Mines of Guerard and stay in a medieval town. And more!