Moving southwards

The first vines! Looking back at the village of Trôo in the distance on the masculine river Loir, a tributary of the feminine Loire (eventually, via the Sarthe). Other evidence of moving further south is a couple of sightings of a Swallowtail butterfly, each time too elusive to photograph. 

Trôo is built on the steep valley side, very pretty with troglodyte remains and most of the houses done up. But all I want is breakfast after a night under the stars that I had not planned (the Moon, Jupiter and Venus alone in the sky in a perfect line as I go to bed) and several miles walk in to the village. And all Trôo had to offer is this.

A baguette machine! Surely not the future of rural France - no bar, no boulangerie? So it's another few miles to Montoire-sur-le-Loir where I call it a day. (Sadly, Montoire is best known as being the place where Marshal Pétain shook hands with Adolf Hitler in October 1940 and agreed to collaborate.) But Trôo did produce the first of these photos of carts that I've been taking over the last week. 

This last one also shows some of the distinctive building style of the area I've passed through in the south of the Orne, the east of the Sarthe, and the west of the Loir-et-Cher departments. The mixing of brick and stone in doorways, the alternating colours of bricks (less evident in this photo) and decorative patterning underneath the roof line. 

This is about the most extreme example of the brickwork that I've seen!