Come with us, do, on an eBike ride through rural Brittany? The legal age for riding a machine of this sort in France being fourteen, we ace the age requirements and set off from a rental facility in the midst of nowhere run by a Dutchman who met a wife and stayed. He has a wooden wheel on the workshop wall, made in ways they used to have to prior the invention of spokes:
The Bretons who occupy the region of Brittany share many cultural norms with the denizens of Cornwall in the UK ~ both culturally annihilated by the capitol and each preferring devolution from the centres of power. They speak a language essentially Celtic, and do stuff like wrestling and folk dancing they'd probably each recognise. Their lands are granitic, the chalk cliffs of the south of England and north of France giving way to igneous types, which explains the preference for stone builds over the use of clay for bricks:
It's a place many Brits retire to, or did so at least until the UK left the EU when it became altogether more complicated. France is wholly more rural than England and not least because it occupies an altogether greater area. It is thus replete with the ideal types of holiday or 'forever' home, offering substantial upgrades to weather and cuisine. The Victorian art critic John Ruskin used grand tours in Europe to pass by abodes you'd imagine living in, knowing that you'd never actually do so... and here is one such, where in fairness they're probably bored senseless:
The overwhelming takeaway from these perambulations around the country lanes of Brittany are the feeling everyone is growing corn (on the cob, as distinct from wheat as the English know corn to be) and that there's a stone cross on every corner and in every village. There used to be many more in Britain too, that disappeared into people's gardens when they ceased to believe in anything beyond IKEA and online gambling:
Put your linens on, however, as we've a wedding to attend...
