A Festival of Festivals.

You wait all year for a festival and then 3 come along all at once.

Well nearly all at once.  Last weekend it was the annual village fête at St Germain du Bel Air which lasted for 4 days with bands playing noisily into the early hours of the morning.
Then this weekend there were 2 more.  The local Young Farmers staged the 'Terre en Fête'

We went early on the Saturday morning especially to see the cattle and the judging of the classes.

There were also lots of horses and demonstrations of working horses.

It was good to see proper animal husbandry.
We so enjoyed the show that we went back again in the afternoon and saw the Voitures Coupées or Cut-up Cars.

These were literally cars cut in half with only the front wheels and they were raced against the clock!!!

Whilst we were wandering around we naturally kept bumping into French locals we knew ... but then, we are locals now ourselves!

The Sunday they were expecting about 8000 people there but we went to the second Fête which was held in the next village of Concores.  This was also on Saturday and Sunday but was mainly a diverse range of bands and musical styles ... all free!

We started our afternoon visit by going to the Exhibition of Photos.

The main display was a wonderful collection of photos taken in the 80's of local people who were then still living the 'old' life.

We then made our way to the small village church for a concert of operatic Arias performed by a soprano and her pianist ...

... and they were both tremendous.  We couldn't get over the quality of their performance in a little church in a little village in the depths of rural France.
Then from the sublime to the ridiculous!  We walked back to the Salle de Fête to see a duo called 'Les Idiots'  who were very French and who could have been very 'bluesy' with the right material.  No matter, they were entertaining the crowd and it was free.

There were also games and events for the kids, in fact something for everyone.

St Germain  has a population of about 500 and Concores about half that yet they stage events with incredible professionalism and we are just amazed and grateful.