Walk, sculpture and a free night!

One of the geocaches!

Monday 1st September

Another beautiful morning and having done some geocaching research, we drove to a parking spot near the lake that we'd seen yesterday.  From there we enjoyed a 5 mile walk around the lake and through a forest that reminded us of Graffham Common - sandy, rocky ground with pine and silver birch trees and bracken.  There were 13 geos to find along the way and we needed to collect a number from each one (to be able to work out the co-ordinates for a bonus cache at the end).  Unfortunately, we couldn't find 5 of them, so working out the bonus was a bit tricky, but we did and we found it! 

We'd read in our trusty (Eyewitness Travel from Horsham Library!) guide book that not far from here, near St. Georges-des-Sept-Voies, was a very unusual sculpture to see - l'Helice Terrestre de l'Orbiere (The Earth's Helix). Jacques Warminsky (and friends) created this by cutting a series of galleries into the soft limestone hillside from a former troglodyte village.  A young lady with excellent English gave us an introduction to the work and then pointed out several openings into the rock face for us to go and explore.  It's quite hard to describe really - there were room-sized caves with tunnels and steps, both up and down, all with different shapes sculpted (is that a word?) for you to feel as you go.  One passage led into a hollow sphere of rock and when you stood in the centre and spoke, it sounded like you were talking into a microphone - the sound bouncing off the concave wall.  Another passage went into a 'black hole' for you to feel your way about, but as the floor was very uneven everywhere and my ankle being a little delicate .... I declined to go in!  John wasn't too keen either!  When you eventually emerge from all this, you climb a staircase outside, from the village level to normal ground level, passing more shapes that are all the reverse forms (convex) of the inside ones.  M. Warminsky's philosophy is a little beyond us, but it was a very interesting and fun work of art to see and experience. 

We continued on our journey after that and stopped for the night at another delightful France Passion vineyard called Domaine des Deux Moulins at Juigne-sur-Loire.  We were greeted by Daniel- the owner, who told us to park up wherever we wished and pointed out the water tap, electric point and toilet.  We didn't use the electric point because we chose a spot on grass too far from it, but later in the evening we used all the other facilities - because not only was there a loo and wash basin, but a fantastic shower with oodles of hot water - none of this pressing a knob for a short spurt of water at a campsite!  In fact the water was so powerful that I dropped our now-small bar-of-soap and it disappeared down the plughole!  And of course, all this is FREE!  BUT - we of course agreed to the degustation of Daniel's wines!  We tried 4 and both liked them all, so we've now done our wine-shopping to bring home.  Daniel is now a very good friend(!) and before we left, he gave us a gift of another bottle of rose - he and his wife do 'chambres-d'hote' as well, so we recommend him.

Dinner at the vineyard