It's Marché Noël time again!

Today marked the start of our local villages Marché Noël season. These Christmas markets are held in many villages and towns all over France and they are generally well organised and very well supported.

Luzé was holding its first Marché Noel today and we went over after lunch to take a look.

 We were not alone....

Cars lined the approach to the centre of the village and the first site to greet us was a rather dopey looking Père Noël riding in a trap pulled by two donkeys. (Red is obviously the 'in' colour in Luzé at the moment!)

Stalls selling foodstuffs were set out around the Place d'Eglise. The huge pan of Choucroute looked very tempting at 9€ a serving.... What a shame we'd just had lunch!

 

 

From here we made our way to the marquee in which were housed stalls selling (varying standards of) craftwork.

Jean, you would have knocked the spots off the bead stall!

This lady demonstrating spinning was happy to let me take her photo...

But the stall attracting the most attention was one displaying tractors and other farm machinery. On close inspection we realised it was all made from wood.

 

And that was it! Luzé's first Marché Noel!

As we'd expected there weren't many stalls but we had wanted to see it and were glad we'd gone. Christmas spirit flows free at these events, which is always very heart-warming.

But as if to remind us that we've not really had the weather yet to herald Christmas, there were sunflowers still in full bloom as we made our way along the cross-country route home.

Not really what you'd expect for November 26th, is it?!