With The Ruskinians in St. Lô, Coutances, and Bayeux

From Caen to St. Lô

After checking out the famous fair, George came back to the hotel, worked on the umpteenth photo, got ready for a 9:30 departure (it is to laugh, per usual), and finally Diane, her son Kevin, Robert, and he managed to get in the car and get going around sometime around 10:45. Many of the streets were blocked off for the street market, and Robert nor the rest of those in the car of us had any idea of how to get out of the city until Kevin, ever competent, rolled down the window at a traffic light and asked some firemen for directions, and in fact they took us exactly where we wanted to go! This second car left the city limits at 11:06. A bit late.

Diane, George, Kevin, and Robert arrived at St Lô to find the others waiting for them before a cathedral that had been partially destroyed in the bombing for the Normandy invasion that devastated 95% of the town. The detail that Ruskin had drawn had been ruined by recent attempts to clean it, leaving everyone sad, until I found a matching one nearby. Left: The bombed out church with the restored portions in a different color stone. Middle left: Cynthia, Jim, and, Suzanne Varady, his friend from Geneva, who owns Ruskin's house there, in front of the cathedral. Middle right: A rare bit of color in this gray stone town. Right: Norma found this bag-piper (which in the middle ages often represented the male sexual organs — an off-color joke on the side of a church?).

Coutances

The town of St Lô was absolutely, completely dead, not a person in sight, not an open cafe, so after giving the very interesting building a good look, the crew set off for Coutances, which has a gigantic cathedral in a very different style:

But before doing our Ruskinian duty, we trooped into a wonderful local creperie (the only place we could see open) and had an excellent meal. Some of us had the large wholewheat gigantic hexagonal crepe called gallette they serve in Normandy for main courses and then the usual crepe for desert. All wonderful.

Left: Robert and Jim at the creperie. Middle: Some interesting trees behind the cathedral. Right: Inside the cathedral.

Now to Bayeux . . .

Since we had caught up with the other party, we did not have to worry about directions and could just follow them to the last town, Bayeux, which had another very different cathedral (as well as the famous tapestry, which some of us didn't go see for lack of time) with lots and lots of funny little grotesques.