Before we head to Fayence, look what Mick picked during our dog-walk early this morning.

We had been watching these ripen for days and had decided today was it!

Delicious.

We chose today to visit Fayence because it was NOT a market day.

I know I’ve mentioned we love visiting markets, but they do inhibit the view of a village.

Fayence holds markets three days each week. They are very popular and it’s almost impossible to get a park when they’re on. Also, we only have three more nights left here and we are already eating loads of leftovers from other market purchases.

We followed a tourist map to get us up to the top of Fayence. Remember, it’s one of the nine perched villages, so naturally a climb was involved.

This building is the remains of the Castle of Lord Fayence. Apparently the Bishop of Fréjus, which is on the coast about 20km away, would holiday here at this time of year because he did not like the smell of the marshes in summer. Now, that was quite awhile ago.

We then reached this tower where we enjoyed a fabulous view from a platform behind this tower.

There was a semi-circular viewing platform that had ceramic tiles painted with information about what we we looking at in all directions.

I said to Mick that it was much more meaningful to us today, as we near the end of our stay here, because we have been to so many of the places depicted on each tile segment.

We were both fascinated by the clustering of the roofs we could see beneath us. Check out the really small alleyways between some of them.

We headed back down into these streets in search of the communal oven. This oven is one of the main tourist attractions in Fayence, besides the markets.

Note the TV aerial poking out of the ancient window above Mick’s head in the photo below. I love seeing these contrasts.

And, the construction between these two buildings to keep them from falling in on each other. (That’s my guess anyway!)

We eventually found where the communal oven, known as Le Four du Mitan, was. But the ‘open-every-day museum’ was closed and all we saw were these small replicas of people from the time it was used, in the front window of the museum.

The oven was built in the 16th century and used up until 1947.

We eventually reached the Place de l’Eglise which looked very different today compared with when we were here two and a bit weeks ago.

Today……

And on market day …

We had one very important job this morning too.

Mick had lost one of the nose pads on his spectacles and could not find it. It was impossible for him to wear his glasses.

Now, we always travel with a spare pair each, but his old glasses are pretty out of date.

We’d noticed an optician on the outskirts of Fayence so we stopped there this morning and asked if he could fix it.

Bien sûr – of course.

He told us to sit and wait while he headed off into his workshop. A few minutes later the spectacles were repaired.

When I asked what did we owe him …

Comment je vous dois?

He told me it was free – a service.

We insisted he take some money for a coffee. He seemed very pleased with €5, which can actually buy him 4 coffees.

But, Mick was even more pleased.