France 2014 Number 7

Winter has returned with a vengeance and this past week has been very cold with icy winds. It didn’t worry us too much on Monday as we had to set to and do the housework. Our charlady has had a rather nasty argument with a motor mower and will apparently be out of action for some time. Having a big hairy Labrador in and out of the house, and wet ground outside, makes for quite a lot of cleaning so we were kept busy for most of the morning. Then it drizzled in the afternoon which was all it took to persuade us to stay indoors. That night the mercury dropped to 2 degrees and by lunchtime the next day had only made it to 6 degrees. A very good day for reading and sewing and listening to the radio. A huge roaring fire in the grate that night not only made us feel better but looked wonderful with the enormous flames leaping up the chimney.

However, the next day we just had to get out and about so we took a short drive to Ruffec about twenty kilometres south of where we are. (By the way, I was looking at some of the back chapters of what I have written and somewhere I noted that the nearest shops to us are twenty kilometres away. I don’t know where that came from because the nearest shops are eight kilometres away.) Ruffec is a quaint little town that seems to have most of what anyone would want and has two large supermarkets, numerous butcheries and bakeries and a number of places to eat ranging from fairly smart restaurants to coffee shops. We were very touched to see that all the trees were wearing leg warmers – how kind!! No, that’s a joke, but the trees really did have knitted or crocheted bands around their trunks, a bit like the pink cloth that was wound around all the trees in Hermanus for  breast cancer month. The knitted pieces are all different colours and must have looked quite spectacular when new, although they are a bit grubby and faded now.

We didn’t get out again until Saturday when cabin fever struck again. This time we went to Civray, also about twenty kilometres away but in an easterly direction. Not as nice as Ruffec but does have a remarkable Romanesque church which has a highly decorated interior. I would never be able to concentrate on the sermon if I had so much to look at! On the way to Civray, we noted three places to look out for on the road back – a chateau, a dolmen and a porcelain factory. At last, something to see apart from churches!

We turned off at the road sign marking the entrance to the chateau and were surprised to find ourselves on a dirt road. All country roads are tarred here, even the most minor of them, so this was very strange. The road deteriorated rapidly, but at the end we could see an imposing gateway so we bounced along toward it. There was no sign to say this was private property, in fact, no sign at all so we slowly crept through the gateway and found ourselves in what looked like the farmyard of a rather large farm. To the left of the gate was a giant pigeon loft in perfect condition but the building straight ahead of us just looked like a large house in rather sad condition. On the right of the gate, with the boundary wall forming its back wall was a small house, partially hidden from view by a very overgrown hedge. There appeared to be someone there, but as we realised that we were on private property, we backed slowly out of the entrance and looked around for some other road that led to the  chateau. Everything looked terribly muddy and unused and we were not prepared to get stuck in the mud, so we finally gave up and went back to the main road. Later when back at home, I looked up the chateau on the internet and discovered that what we had found was, indeed, the chateau, but also that it is privately owned and is not open to the public.

The next item on our list was the dolmen. A dolmen is an ancient burial site marked by three upright stones, with a flat capstone across the tops. Some of them date from 4000 to 3000 BC and the size of the capstones is remarkable. How these ancient people managed to raise the stones in the first place, and then to balance them on the three uprights, is amazing. The thinking is that, at the time, the sides would have been filled in with earth and small stones and more earth piled on top of the capstone to form a mound, but that this lighter material has been weathered away leaving only the ‘skeleton’ of big stones. Anyway, it seemed like quite an interesting thing to go and look at. But when we got to the spot, the parking place had been barricaded off and neither side of the road had any space to stop, so we had no option but to drive on.

Never mind, we thought, we still have the porcelain factory to visit at St Saviol. Imagine our disgust at ourselves when arrived and found the factory still closed for the two hour siesta! Fortunately though, the building has windows on three sides and we were able to see what sort of porcelain it is that they make, and some of the prices. It looked very fine and some items were beautifully decorated, so perhaps it is just as well that they were closed as I may have been persuaded to buy something.

After these three scenic disasters, one would think we would just give up and go home, but there was one more oddity that we were determined to find, and it was, more or less, on the way home. At a tiny place called Pers is something called a ‘Lanterne de Morts’ – a lantern of the dead. Usually erected in a cemetery, these lanterns are generally about seven metres high and are often cylindrical. There is a small door at the base while the top has openings that face the four compass points. There is often a ledge at about table height on the outside of the tower. This was where flowers or other offerings were left. The small door allowed someone to enter the tower and climb to the top where a fire would be lit, and maintained, from the day a person died until the day of burial. They date from about the twelfth century. Luckily we found the church quite easily and the cemetery next door. And there at the bottom of a small incline was the lantern. In this case, it was a square tower with sides of about one metre and easily seven metres tall. It would have to be a really small person who climbed in through the door at the bottom, but they were smaller, then, weren’t they? There were also some very very old grave stones dating from the eleventh century that were covered in engravings and all in a beautifully maintained graveyard. This is something that always amazes me about France, or perhaps it is Europe in general. Here we have a tiny village with no obvious signs of life, and yet the grass verges are neatly trimmed and the graveyard is neat and tidy, and the flowers in the boxes outside the mayor’s office are bright and cheerful and obviously watered regularly. It is something to do with ‘community’ living – something one doesn’t come across very often in South Africa.