Brantome

 As I said yesterday we decided to stay an extra day. After a torridly hot night (no a/c) we woke to overcast skies and a mild temperature.After a leisurely hotel breakfast we headed into the town and purchased tickets to enter the abbey and surrounding grounds. The original site even before the abbey is a series of caves which have been inhabited for millennia. Amazing to see and some quite impressive wall carvings have endured and date from different periods. Much of the abbey has been rebuilt or refurbished at various times but the impressive bell-tower is all original. 








There were several artists displaying their works in some of the abbey which was nice to see. 

The attached Church is still in use to this day and is well patronised. Catholicism appears alive and well in France. 

We then had a decent wander around the old town and river which is very cool and has grown in proportion to the Abbey which it traditionally served. There are shops and restaurants build into the rock. 





Canoe hire is very popular here and the river has a couple of little weirs. It was quite amusing to watch people in the canoes get stranded atop these barriers and struggling to get over them. The crowd were amused and a round of applause was given for the best efforts. 

After a patisserie each for lunch we adjourned to our hotel where we had a planning session outside under an umbrella. 

In keeping with the Troglodyte theme of the day we dined in an Indian restaurant set in a cave. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

St Claude to Manigod

Image
 Only around 140km today but very very windy on our chosen route. Today we wind up into the foot hills of the French alps where we will spend a few days. Chris and Karen have hired a house here and have kindly invited us to stay.  The terrain is lovely very reminiscent of Switzerland which I guess is hardly surprising as we are close to the border. Lovely forests and pretty green meadows.  All the little villages are out of story books and are kept in absolutely pristine condition.  We passed a lookout through to the big mountains and there was a sign board depicting and naming them including the famous Mt Blanc. Unfortunately for us they were all obscured in what appears to a heat haze.It is very hot up here with temperatures into the low 30’s. A little later we did see some outlines through the haze and they are big mountains.   We watched the weather on TV last night and there is another heatwave imminent. Some areas, in fact most areas will experience high 3...
Read more

Dinan to Mont St Michel

Image
 Another grey day and threatening rain. We only have a short distance to go and we only had a bit of drizzle until we got near our destination and then it hosed down.  We were too early to check into our hotel but we could park in the hotel carpark and leave gear in the lobby.  We have arrived at probably the 2nd most photographed place in France behind the Eiffel Tower.  Mont Saint Michel is an icon. Of course there are tourists everywhere but for good reason, this place is epic.  We jumped on the free shuttle bus which traverses a causeway out to the island. The weather had fined up and the tide was out so we could wander around the island to get different perspectives and to truly appreciate the scale of this place.   We then entered the compoumd and meandered up and up and joined a queue to get tickets into the abbey proper. We opted to get the audio guide as well which was well worthwhile.  The design and engineering of the abbey is off the s...
Read more

Kassel to Celle

Image
 A lovely day today. The weather is pleasant and our journey has also been very pleasant without being spectacular. Much like yesterday really, many lovely farming villages and perfect back country roads meandering through rolling farmlands and woodland forests. For several km the road was lined with lovely oak trees, very nice until I considered the possibility of having to take evasive action at some point……I stopped thinking about it then.  Our destination is the town of Celle which we didn’t know too much about but it is a gem. After checking into our hotel we walked through a lovely park into the old town.   We visited the palace dated back to the 12 th century. It is now a really beautiful museum.  There are many pieces of period furniture in place and some of the cabinets amd bureaus have staggeringly beautiful inlaid wood patterns. The last permanent resident of this palace was Caroline Matilda the sister of King George III.  She married the Danish king ...
Read more