The Picturesque Parc des Parelles

The arrival of spring seems to have coincided with the beginning of the winter holidays (ie ski-fortnight for the well-to-do!) so we nipped out for a spot of geocaching this morning. We went to the nearby Parc des Parelles over the Indre border.

It’s a beautiful spot – not particularly large at 24 hectares, but criss-crossed by lots of paths so that you can easily spend a couple of hours wandering around.

It’s geologically interesting as it has granite (which was quarried for a time) and also sandstone cliffs.

There are many sinuous (that was our word of the day) streams with moss-covered boulders and trees along their banks.

Back in the nineteenth-century, 1854 to be exact, local celeb author George Sand (the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin) visited and enjoyed it. So much so that she included it as a setting in her novel Nanon and also in her Legendes Rustiques. Well, 160 years later, we enjoyed it too. And here I am writing about it too in my blog! Somehow I don’t think anyone will be hanging up panels about me though!

We headed for the Dorderin, a large boulder perched at the highest part of the park.

The pathways are very well maintained although today some of the log bridges were a little slippy. These trunk cross section parts of the path were pretty skiddy too.

After the Dorderin we meandered some more and came across some leftover quarried stones. There are lots of small quarried areas, some of which have now filled with water. All very picturesque.

We didn’t find the geocache we were after. But we’ll be back. There’s an entrance charge of €2 per adult and €1 per child (up to and including 12 years of age), but that’s waived for genuine geocachers. We happily paid our fees today, though, since we were so pleased to have discovered this little beauty spot and a lot of work clearly goes into it to keep it so attractive.

There’s even an amphitheatre for concerts in the summer. Someone’s been very busy.