We went out exploring again in France today - this time stopping in the town of Mayenne.
According to wikipedia the town has a population of just over 12,000. Although I have to say that it seemed larger than that to us.
Its not a place we've ever been before, so we found a parking place roughly in the centre and then went exploring. We started out down a street which had these lovely butterfly bunting flags.
We were heading for the river, as we had seen it from a larger bridge further up, and it looked quite pretty. On the way there we passed this stunning church, which I think is called Notre Dame des Basilica. Thats a statue of Joan of Arc beside the steps.
There was also this lovely statue in the centre of the road - looks likes its been in the battles though - its lost a few pieces !
From there it was just a short walk to the river, which is quite pretty.
By the river we saw a sign pointing us towards the Chateau Museum. You can see the chateau in the left of this picture, with a couple of lovely medieval buildings on the right on the way there.
Next to the street taking us to the castle, we spotted this poor building which had some considerable bracing keeping it in place !
The climb up to the castle (chateau) took us passed this house with some quite incredible brick work !
I quite liked this other house, just adjacent to it and the castle - quite pretty indeed.
The castle was half ruined/half not ! We went into the museum and had a look around (will cover it in another post).
We then walked a little further up to the castle walls which provide quite a commanding view over the river and the town.
From there, we wanted to check out the river further, so we made our way back down, and across one of the main bridges - in the pic above you can see that beautiful basilica again.
Thats the view from the opposite bank. The Basilica and the castle really do dominate the town centre. On the left you can see a large arch in the river wall. There were a few of those along the river, and I found them quite intriguing. I think some may have been passages for streams and the like, but others seemed to lead to something further. I could see steps and the like inside them - maybe they were river gateways from some of the large buildings by the riverside.
I have to say that we were quite surprised at how quiet it was. Many of the shops were shut, which seemed odd considering it was early afternoon on a Wednesday, and there was not many people around at all. There were a few areas set up on the riverside, including some kind of stage just to the left of this view - but it really was quite quiet.
We made a circuit around the river. It was really warm, and quite humid, so we were really starting to flag at this point. We dont get warm and humid in the UK - so we were not coping with it !
From there, we decided to start making our way back to the car.
We checked out the other end of the church on the way back (the front) - considerably different from the back !
And then passed another impressive medieval building, housing a hairdressers (!), before getting back to the car.
It was quite a pretty town. The basilica in particular was quite stunning, it was just oddly very quiet ! Anyway, it was great to explore another new town in France - we really are enjoying our holiday here.