Walk 2. The First Lane....and grasshoppers.

As it is vacance, Crash and Bang(the twins) and Wallop ( Older sister) are accompanying me today - so this walk is do-able by active six and eight year olds. And can be accompanied by flagging adults.
Striking out again from Guemene's main street, facing the Hotel de Ville - take rue Joseph Freres around to the right and swing into rue Louis le Bail. Continue past the church and half timbered corner house turn up ruelle du Moulin, past flowered terraced houses, and down to the curiousity shop of Meubles le Poher on the left.
A side trip - explore the steps beside Meubles and have a look at the old lavoir - a wash house - where clothes were scrubbed. Not a well kept one - but a lovely little tucked away site with a good supply of running water. A darkly-green cavernous feel to this one, tucked behind the houses.
Back on the street take the left turn at the Grand Moulin to Kervair, Kerlouis and Krenanan. This was the old mill on the river and is a historic building with quirks such as horsehoes buried in the wall as hitching posts and a window up near the roof that doesn't quite fit - I always wonder which was discovered first - the shape of the odd stone or the lie of the roof.
The river Scorff rushes noisily and swiftly past this corner, around the petanque court. Bang and Crash scramble down the rocky banks and try to fish with hastily grabbed reed rods and chase metallic blue and green damsel and dragonflies off a fallen tree trunk.

Calling them to hand we continue across the road bridge and heel right, up the steep hill towards Krenanan hill. This is a bit of a grind for the trio - the hill is long and sloping and not near enough to the woods to be interesting yet. But we soon reach the end and head off the road onto the forest track that runs on through light woodland. A little further on the road takes a left and becomes gravelled. This is now alternating between wood and field, a rural lane full of ragged robin, vetches, birds foot trefoil and campion. Crash has a fern wand twice as big as herself and does an impersonation of the Queen of Sheba - with her servant. A one-woman costume drama....
The brambles are thick on this part of the walk and the sun and shelter has made them enormous. The trio are stained with black juice - looking like some dreadful plague of bruises has visited their hands and faces. The track sweeps around to open, dusty, spiky, harvested fields that fall away from the path and behind us , over the woods peeps the grey and white tower of Krenanan church ( another day, another walk....). Their next sport is catching grasshoppers - the air is thick with the tinny marracca sound of their chirrups and the grass snaps with movement as we walk across it....some are even caught - and spring away as soon as the hand is opened.
The weather is warm and sultry, but Wallop remembers last year when the snow was so thick they were falling down the slope into the fields, not being able to see the edge....

On up into the shade again and the track comes out onto hard top road. Turning left brings you down into the hameau of Kerrones. This is a sleepy huddle of gite houses and outhouses, renovations and ruin. Carry on until the sign for Ty Pempoul - here, just before the sign, take a careful turn right as this is where this sunken lane starts. It starts out as a store for firewood and drops down into a cool, green cave open only to the top. It is not one of the deeper ones, but I love this one as it was my first discovery of these inter-connnected lanes. KNowing how to spot them has become an art - and many now lead nowhere, being truncated by tractors and combines. They love this dark underworld and make occasional forays up onto the talu to look up out onto the fields like wood elves looking onto the world of men. The ground, like the best lanes, is soft, spongy and slightly mouldy. Most lanes have retained their damp air, even in this years chaleur. A large beech has collapsed at the middle part of the path, leaving an astonishing gap of sunlight, air and growth.
Soon we reach the road and turn left for Guemene. This is the down side - hard top walking, fast drivers from Paris and keeping well into the side.....but we reach the Scorff, once more the natural boundary for the town, watch a moorhen chick squeak into the reeds. Crash wants to take it home as a pet - ever the sentimentalist, she will cry when the swallows leave and buries the faded remains of butterflies.

Two and a half hours - but we did a lot of grasshoppers and blackberrying.