After leaving our relative at the airport we have to welcome another two relatives the next day. But in the meantime we have to settle into our next AirBnB that we will use during our visit. It is close to the airport but we want to arrive during the day as it is in a more remote village and we are not sure how easy it will be to find and enter it. We are lucky that the GPS takes us to the correct spot and after some stumbling we find the entrance and in we go. It is a large AirBnB but quite sparsely decorated which is just fine though.
It even has a dungeon where the washer is located with a mystery room blocked off by cardboard, very spooky. But the rooms are nice and each of them has an AC which is great as our relatives do not like AC and this way everyone can use it as desired.
At the entrance is a small area with a vacuum cleaner and it is quite useful as the kitchen is nearby and an ant colony lives in the walls making their way every night inexorably into the kitchen. So in the morning before breakfast they must be cleaned so we can eat and move around.
The house has a relatively covered parking that keeps our car mostly hidden from the scorching sun. And it is scorching during our stay, during the day it is difficult to move around if there is no shade. The surrounding area is also beautiful with a few two tracks that can be used for hiking.
Before our relatives arrive we also buy some supplies so they have something to eat when they arrive. Not too much though, just enough for the first day, so we can go together and buy what they like after they arrive.
After our relatives arrive we spend some time using the two-track roads to explore the area. There are lots of fields with hawks patrolling them and likely scared mouses cowering into holes.
The village is at the foothill of some hills and we decide to climb them another day, today we are happy just walking around on level ground avoiding all the cats that watch us intently.
We find a few ruins on the way but most are overgrown and cannot be reached without some serious bushwacking that we decide to forgo. There are also views from time to time of the nuclear plant that is more or less dominating the skyline in this area.
We continue exploring until we get close to the main road and then decide to return to the AirBnB via a different route taking us past another ruin, quite a few of them here.
The golden hour here is quite beautiful with the mountains seemingly catching fire as the sun falls behind the horizon and we hurry back as we don’t have flashlights with us.
Most evenings, including the first one, we exit at night to listen for owls and watch the moon and constellations above us. It is really a tranquil place and we enjoy our stay here.
On another day we take one of the roads into the village to explore more of it. As most countryside villages in France it has a long history and we want to explore it for a while.
We start on a road that borders the village on the foothills, with great views and probably the most impressive new homes.
The views are impressive both when looking up towards the hills but also down looking over the village so we continue exploring as we approach the main village church.
It is a quite a huge church for the small village, which is quite usual really in these small villages. It cannot be entered so we explore it just from the outside while looking for a new cache and are impressed by how huge it is and how special it looks in the golden hour light.
As most churches it has a small old cemetery and after a bit of exploring we continue on to discover the rest of the village.
There is a seemingly weird bunker like structure that we hope is something else and not a mysterious artefact from Nazi times. And of course from almost every point we can see the nuclear plant which is just a few miles away.
As the sun sets we make our way into the center of the village which hosts, rather unexpectedly, an old bread oven. There are also a few interesting houses but it is getting late and we have to return as tomorrow we have a relatively busy day planned.
On the last full day here we decide to explore the heights around us. There is a special reason for that, it holds a chapel that has some aircraft remains and our relative is quite interested in airplanes. We do two forays, one to explore the trail and the second is the actual hike to the top. The first one is at midday and we quickly find the trail going through the shade which is a blessing given how hot it is outside.
However soon we notice that it actually exits into a field before even reaching the foothills where we will have to climb so we decide to retreat and try again later.
We try again in the evening, with the sun setting beautifully on the horizon, the temperatures are not as oppresive as they were previously.
This time we pass through the fields near a farm house which has dogs barking at us and then reach the foothills.
The trail now is up and up almost constantly and we are really happy that we didn’t do it at midday. We stop a few times also to catch our breath and enjoy the views of the village and the farm we just passed.
At the top the trail is leveling up and it is a short distance to the chapel which holds the aircraft remains we are looking for.
There are a few informative panels and from there we understand what happened here, we had only a limited knowledge prior. During WW2 there was an airfield past the village and the planes were using the chapel as a navigational aid to approach it. One flew to close to the ground and touched it, crashing and killing everyone onboard. Some of the pieces of the airplane are inside the small chapel but it is closed so we can see them only through the door.
We then spend some time enjoying the beautiful sunset and temperatures before remembering we have to descend in darkness so we start back and arrive safely to the AirBnB. Overall the area was surprisingly fun and interesting and we enjoyed our stay at the AirBnB in this remote area.
