When we headed over to Saumur to take advantage of part of the family's birthday present for Pauline we decided to make a weekend of it, As we had revisited the town after many years only last September with Eileen we decided to check out some of the sites we had not visited in nearby Doue la Fontaine, famous for it roses and troglodytes.
Our first stop was at Les Troglos de la Sablière where a young guide who seemed nervous in the ticket office took on a new persona as she entered the caves giving us and a French couple,the only visitors, an excellent guided tour.
I would like to start at the end of the tour where you enter the gallery formed out of fifty years of digging by one man ( M.Grégoire) extracting falun (shale) sand by the bucketful and selling it to put food on the table while his wife runs a little bistro, next to the extraction shaft, to the same end. While digging he discovered ancient troglodyte dwellings that had been used as a refuge from invaders. Not unsurprisingly they had no family to carry on the tradition.
Later, another owner had the idea of offering the caves to artists, a tradition that carries on today, you can see the results below.
The first place you visit is the former house of the ownners which became a wine cellar.
The cut-out ledge was apparently where the slept.
Then it was on to te galleries.
Amazing!
ReplyDeleteWe must go and see it all for ourselves.
When we were first house hunting in France we looked at a troglodyte house in Villaines-les-Rochers, thinking it might be fun to own one. The front was a very pretty cottage built of tuffeau with caves forming the other rooms. It was dark, damp and smelly and would have been no fun at all.