Hole in the fence

The garden of our Gite is (or rather, was) fully fenced in. Here's a photo taken from the country lane that passes by the Gite in 2016 after Toby and I had spent a week cutting down the pine trees at the end of the garden:

Unfortunately that's what things used to look like. This morning I received a text and series of photos of the garden today.

Looks like someone has come down the hill, lost it on the bend, perhaps due to ice, then straight through the fence, across the lawn, and finishing up with taking out one of the apple trees.

All very upsetting, and more repair work for me next time I go to the Gite. Grr.

Rather than wooden posts which are liable to rot I intend to replace the fence with green metal posts and fencing which will match the new fencing along the front of the Gite:

Church buys controversial statue in nearby Ploërmel

I was amused to read a news article on Connexion France about a dispute over a statue of Pope John Paul II in the town of Ploërmel - which is only 20 miles from our Brittany Gite.

According to the Connexion article, a dispute had arose because the statue of the Pope had a cross on the top - a symbol that broke France’s 1905 law of separation between Church and State.

The town council has agreed to sell the statue to the Catholic Church for €20,000.

By selling the statue and the church moving it from a public carpark to a nearby Catholic private college, the dispute that would have required the cross on the top to be removed appears to have been resolved.