Monday 1st October 2012 – Bray sur Seine

On our walk yesterday we came across the Musee des Pays de Seine et Marne, a museum of rural life and, noting that it was open today, we decided to pay it a visit. The museum's aim is to inform the visitor about the traditional rural and industrial life of the area and it does it very well. Exhibits of farming practices and the crafts of cheese making and basket weaving reminded us very much of Somerset and our own Rural Life Museum in Glastonbury. Many other crafts were covered such as the production of spirits (with a mobile still on display), vine growing, sheep and cattle rearing and weaving with a magnificent loom dominating the room. Most impressive was the way that the exhibits were displayed, with excellent lighting and a very open and clear feel to the room despite the number of artefacts. One area of particular interest to me was the millstones. We had noticed a large number of millstones around the village and it turned out that the area around the nearby village of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre was a major source of millstone grit. There were many quarries in the area producing millstones for wind and water mills and these were exported all around the world, with many British mills using French stones. The visit was made much more interesting by the booklet in English that gave us a guide to the museum as a whole and a translation of the descriptions of the individual artefacts.

We moved on, determined to get to the Mediaeval walled town of Provins. The satnav took us on a rather strange route that had the happy side-effect of taking us to a free parking place next to the Porte de Jouy, the 13^th Century gate to the town. Visitors are not allowed access to the town from Spring to Autumn but the locals obviously are as there were plenty of cars around. The town is well worth a visit and walking around the Mediaeval streets is a delight. One intriguing find was the very large Mediaeval farm buildings still in use in the centre and that explained why an enormous tracked tractor was manoeuvring its way out of the Porte de Jouy as we were walking in. This obviously dated back to Mediaeval times when the surrounding land was farmed during the day whilst the farm workers retreated to the safety of the wall town during the night or times of unrest.

We also walked down into the more modern town below. This was a classic case of a town expanding into less suitable areas. The land here was marshy and this has caused problems with the churches and other large buildings, many of them suffering from serious subsidence.

We thought of staying in the aire at Provins but as we had time we decided to move on to the aire at Bray sur Seine. There is a car park and motorhome services right on the quay but the aire is 200m further on next to a pretty park. We were able to watch sand and aggregate being loaded onto a barge before it set off on its journey down the Seine.

Photos: The Musee des Pays de Seine et Marne; A Mediaeval building on the corner of the Place de Chatel in Provin; Aggregate barges on the Seine at Bray.