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THE GREAT WALL OF THE PERCHE (Normandy)

FROM THEIR ROOMS, OUR B&B GUESTS CAN SEE THE EMERGENCE OF OUR GREAT WALL

Not exactly the Great Wall of China, nor even Hadrien’s Wall, still less the Lion Gate of Mycenae, but the building technique is time-honoured… worked at over a period of several months, the stones hand-tooled when they don’t fit first time, it’s basically a dry-stone wall (with the occasional assist from a bucket of mortar). We call it the Ammonite Wall after the many fossils we found when selecting our stones: the Perche is particularly rich in fossils some of which are prominently placed in the finished construction. Our guests are always welcome to lend a hand, but, strangely enough, the prospect of lugging around boulders and buckets of mortar in this winter’s driving rain hasn’t attracted many volunteers!

We built the wall so as to retain a new flower bed and add colour beneath the conifers on this side of the house : planting later this month (see a subsequent article).

Diaporama

Virginia helps Marie to design the wall Work in progress Ammonites and trilobites Macho Ammonite Almost finished

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