31 October - Clermont-Ferrand, Walk about town

The forecast for the day was not so good, but the morning was so beautiful we decided to delay work and take a walk.  I wanted to get photos of the chrysanthemums in the planters around town, then perhaps get out of the center of town for a bit. 

By the time we left the house, it was starting to get cloudy, but that was all the better for photos.  Our first stop was Place de Salford and a monument erected in 1954 in memory of deceased war veterans.  We pass this every day on the way to school.

Place de Salford, Clermont-Ferrand

Place DeLille, Clermont-Ferrand

From there we went across Place de Lille (they have turned off this fountain now for the winter - last winter we saw it frozen)











Then we walked up the hill to Place de la Poterne with Puy de Dome in the distance.  Notice also how the hills surround town.


Place de la Poterne, Clermont-Ferrand, France



Place de la Poterne

Next we walked towards the cathedral to get photos of the "trailing" mums in these planters:

From here we could see that the hills on the edge of town are becoming quite colorful.

Clermont-Ferrand, France

We walked down hill to the next tram stop and took the tram headed north, our intent was to switch to a bus, then walk up to Chauteaugay.  Map:  Place de Lille to Chauteaugay
Chateaugay is a neat town on a hill with vineyards, wine caves, a chateau, and hiking trails in the country. 

Chateaugay, France

Chateaugay France

 Well, we did not get all the way to Chateaugay today (photos are from an earlier walk).  But we DID get to Cebazat where we had a very nice walk.  We took the tram north to Croix de Neyrat, just past the Auchan (huge supermarket).  There we were going to change to the # 3 bus, but the wait was more than 30 minutes on Sunday afternoon, so we started to walk along the bus route.


Cebazat, France

 Then it started to thunder and look like hard rain coming toward us, so we cut short our walk and stopped in the park for a snack.

Cebazat, France

Cebazat, France

Cebazat, France

While we were snacking it started raining pretty hard, so we packed up and headed home.  We put on our rain gear and walked back to the tram stop - we felt like we needed the exercise and it was actually a pretty day. All in all, we got in a couple of hours walk today.  We need to do that more often.