Day 74: Angers to Chenehutte-Treves- Cunault

April 20, 2024

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Michel FleurancePlease correct Chennehutte Les Tuffeaux
to Chênehutte-Trèves-Cunault
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7 months ago

After one whole day of walking around, we feel very familiar with downtown Angers. So we enjoyed our last little ride past some favoutite spots as we left town.

The Maison Bleue, mostly shrouded. At this distance and in this light, no blue is visible.

About one km out of downtown, I was watching for the beautiful old city to turn to modern ugliness. It didn't quite do that. Rather, as you see below, houses were still awfully nice.

The above photo is a bit misleading, because on the other side of the street were these relatively ugly apartments.

There was still a chance for the city to degenerate into car dealerships and box stores, and maybe it does, in some direction. But for us, within 4 km of downtown we were already at the entrance of the Ardoises park. What this is about is that a little southeast of Angers there were huge deposits of slate. From the 8th century this was used for walls and from the 11th for roofing. Extraction began in open air pits with manual methods, and progressed as steam and heavy equipment became available. The industry began to falter in the early 20th century, with competition from other building materials, such as clay tiles. By the 1970's, all the larger quarries had closed. However, as we have seen with other mining landscapes (such as coal around Leipzig), environmental restoration can turn moonscapes into valuable parks.

In the case of Angers, the open quarries are lakes today, and all the stone lying around is fostering growth of plants, birds, and animals. The area is maintained as a park, and what must have been rail lines to transport the slate now amount to a network of great cycle ways.

We have been to this area before, and like it a lot. But there are two shadows on the story to mention. The first is from when we first were here, in 2015. Coming in on EV 6 from the east and trying to reach Angers, there is a river to cross. It's the Authion. To make the crossing on the bikeway, the nearby town of La Dagueniere provides a cable drawn self-serve little boat. When we arrived here in 2015, the boat was out of service, parked in the middle of the river. A call to the emergency number provided nearby, to La Dagueniere city hall, provided no help. Consequently we had to slog through grass and mud for a fair distance, to the dangerous highway bridge. Because of this experience, which you can re-live with us here, we subtitled that blog page "C'mon Mairie de La Dagueniere, get serious!".

The second shadow is provided by Kevin Stevens, in his 2021 blog "The French Connections". Having read our 2015 contribution, he began to call the Authion crossing the "death ferry". He also found the Ardoise park "creepy", was turned off by wrecked cars that he found and photographed there. He did find the ferry in operation, and with some help, he and his wife made it across and up the opposite bank.

For our time in the park today, we had sunshine, and we really enjoyed every part of it. There were the unaccustomed piles of slate, slate slag, slate chips, and slate boulders; there were roadside panels covering the plant and animal life, describing the deep blue water filled holes, talking about how the slate was extracted, etc. etc. We collected one sliver of souvenir slate as well, to replace the one taken nine years ago, but since misplaced.

There were many examples of slate construction, like this dry stacked wall.

Here behind the trees are mountains of slate "slag", we guess.

This sign reveals the positive attitude that lies behind the park.

Closeup of a slate boulder stuck in the ground. You can see the flaky nature of the material.

Here is a wall similar to the one photographed earlier. The info panels discuss how it was built.

See how plants like to grow amid the stone.

You would think a clear and cold rock lake would be great for swimming - but that is strongly discouraged here. I like that French word "hydrocution".

They are trying to scare me with 66 meters of depth. But I usually swim only in the top one foot?

These water filled holes are throughout the park.

There is lots of scrap slate thrown about. A sign explains that workers were very picky about what were good and bad pieces.

Dodie spotted this structure and its wheels, and wondered what it did.

There turned out to be lots of them around - part of a slate transport system.

There were also little engines like these around.

Once we were through the park, we had the ambition of visiting the slate museum, which we understood was in the nearby town of Trelaze. We had a track from the Tourism people that we thought would take us there, and we rather blindly followed it. If you look at the map below, you see us coming in from the upper left, through where it says "Les Petits Carreaux". Then we swing left around the big pond, and come to where a right, onto the dotted green, would have taken us to the Authion, and the little ferry. But on the way we met another cyclist, who stopped to tell us the ferry was not operating. La Dagueniere city hall strikes again. Nine years they've had to clean up their act!

In any event we turned left and went in to Trelaze, looking for the museum. It turned out to be way west of town, very near to where we had passed much earlier, up by those little lakes. We eventually went straight southeast, and crossed the river on the dangerous road, near where it says Sorges.

A cyclist delivers the bad news about the cycle ferry.

In Trelaze we found exactly one sign for the museum. Only the GPS allowed us to eventually get there.

The museum was closed. At first we thought they had pulled the "Clemenceau" trick, by closing for lunch 12-14 and closing an hour before closing. But no, this was a variant trick: today they would only open at all at 14:30!

We responded to this by jumping the fence (slate, of course) and strolling the grounds for a bit. Very reminiscent of the "forest museum" near our home, they had a selection of old equipment lying about, and some photos of how it was in the old days.

There was even this pond behind the building, but no indication if it came from slate mining.

Out front there was this statue depicting slate splitting. Had we stayrd around until 16:00 we would have seen a demonstration of this.

As mentioned, we then made for the "dangerous bridge" and followed the dangerous highway into La Dagueniere.

Aha, here we are at City Hall. Let's go bawl them out about the bike ferry!

Down the road we came to a rather attractive chapel, that the sign said was from about 1890. A healing miracle attributed to Mary lay behind its construction. It is called Notre Dame de la Salette, and was apparently quite a pilgrimage site for a while. It has some striking full sized stone statues outside as well.

Next door was this hall, which is a site for Boule de Fort. We take this to be a form of Boules, the game of throwing balls, in a manner reminiscent of Curling. There are three halls like this in the neighbourhood. They used to be a men's domain, but have long since been opened up to all. The players belong to "societies". This hall is the home of the "Laboureur" society.

Next up for us was St Mathurin, a lovely town facing the Loire. The buildings seem distinctive of this part of France.

We crossed the river at St Mathurin, and continued through a string of towns, that also seemed to occupy fairly narrow strips along the frontage.

We found closely spaced apple orchards along this way.

And some interesting houses of different styles.

The road along the river here was very low traffic, but still, shoulderless.

At Le Thoureil there was not a lot of room for cars plus bikes.

At Gennes we found a large Super U, which always produces cries of "Super U!" from me. We stocked up a bit, since tomorrow is Sunday, and proceeded to our BnB, at a farm called Launay, not far from Chennehutte. The room here is 3-4x the size of a hotel room, and we have a microwave, fridge, and kitchen supplies. It is also dead quiet, being deep in the countryside. If you do have food with you, it's a great place.

Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 3,589 km (2,229 miles)

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Robyn RichardsWe crossed the Authion on this self-haul wee ferry in 2019 then continued on our merry way to Angers for the night. It seemed a great adventure. I had no idea how fortunate we were to find it in operation or of the significance and history of the slate-strewn countryside on the other side - so I really appreciate you filling on the gaps in this post, thank you!
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7 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Robyn RichardsWow, you hit the jackpot! We struck out twice, but console ourselves by using the mantra "Well, it's good material for the blog."
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7 months ago

Robyn RichardsTo Steve Miller/GrampiesIt truly is.
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7 months ago