Rochefort-en-Terre may not be THE most beautiful village in France as it claims, but it is on the official list of “Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.” And it’s only ten kilometers from our cottage.
Rochefort must be something on a sunny summer day when the flowers are blooming and the smell of freshly baked goods perfumes the market place. As for us, we’ll take a cool, cloudy autumn day without the crowds.
We strolled around the uncrowded cobbled streets, peeking into shops, reading the signs, wandering down alleyways and admiring Rochefort’s 2000 residents’ attention to detail. When the skies opened up, we took sanctuary from the downpour in Notre Dame de la Tronchaye, Our Lady of the Trunk. In the 10th Century a priest supposedly hid a wooden statue of Mary nursing Jesus in a hollow tree trunk to protect it from Viking invasions. The church was built on the site where the statue was discovered two centuries later and named after the tree trunk.
There is an American connection with Rochefort, too—besides us, of course. In the early 20th Century the American painter Alfred Klots liked the town so much he decided to buy the dilapidated chateau which he planned on restoring to an elegant castle. We had never heard of Alfred, never seen his art and, blaming the weather, haven’t visited his castle either.
Not quite finished with megaliths, we had to stop at the Alignements du Moulin near
Saint Just. Not nearly as impressive or well-known as Carnac, these stone monuments were reported in the 18th Century but were covered by forest until fires in 1976 revealed them again. They’re so name because of the nearby windmill, “moulin” in French. With a little hiking and some luck we also found Les Mademoiselles de Cojoux, two more wayward girls turned to stone for dancing on Sunday. The Fourth Commandment was strictly enforced back then.
