Rochechouart

To get to Rochechouart we passed by the village of Manot, with another chateau to look at! I loved the view up to the village from our road, and chose this view of the chateau for you. That's a farm in the foreground!

Rochechouart is a pretty town with its own chateau that originates way back in the 11th century. It belonged to the de Rochechouart family for 800 years and was taken over by the local council to become the "town hall" in 1832. There is a new hotel de ville or town hall now on the square opposite the chateau, but the chateau still houses a museum of contemporary art and an exhibition of the original 16th century frescoes of the Labours of Hercules. The town is also famous for the fact that 200 million years ago, a 1.5 kilometre, 6000 million tonne meteorite hit the earth in this area! There is a small museum in the town dedicated to that and its effects, which we didn't visit, but maybe another time.

We parked in the sqare outside the castle, though not in the disabled space near the drawbridge entrance! I like what they do in France! The notice says, If you take my space take my disability too.

Through the old gateway with its strong studded wooden doors we came into the huge courtyard, basically a square surrounded by buildings and a tower in each corner. Around the square was the cloister-like walkway with its fabulously carved pillars!

After sometime wandering, we headed off to look at the rest of the town. A drink and lunch was our next priority so finding a cafe, we sat down at a table outside and waited for le garçon to finish serving a meal to a couple of Frenchwomen at a nearby table. Eventually Ian went to ask if we could order le plat du jour only to be told that lunchtime was over, so instead we ordered a drink, vin rouge pour moi and une bière for Ian, and sat talking and people watching! The two women at the nearby table were enjoying their meal but as you can see from the photo someone else joined them and did pretty well for him/herself, thank you very much! Little morsels kept finding their way to the ground, though the young woman made no other fuss of the cat!

One of our topics of conversation was the wooden window shutters that tend to act as double glazing does here! Houses are warmer in winter and cooler in summer by simply closing the shutters! Ian has folding metal shutters that will need some work done on them, but ideally he would like to replace them with wooden ones. The trouble is though that when opened against his outside walls, they would overlap each other on the front wall. I suggested folding shutters, which was an idea he thought might be feasible, but there was something about the positioning of the metal shutter frames that made things difficult! I saw the problem at the time but can't think now what it was! So Ian, if you are reading this, please enlighten me again! Sitting at the cafe Ian suddenly realised that the upper windows had sliding shutters - another interesting idea, he thought - hence this photo, apart from the fact that it is quite a nice picture (I think!)

So after a while, not having had lunch, we trundled over to the patisserie and bought cakes - big gooey choux pastry ones filled with custard cream stuff (chocolate for me. Ian had the coffee one!) They were called Religieuses! I looked that up and as a noun it means a nun, or a cream bun! Anyway we took our cream buns to the area where the men play pétanque or boules and watched play going on - the guys throwing metal balls at the small wooden "jack" or cochonnet. Ian plays it, at Confolens I think, and explained to me the object of the game in the first place, the procedure, how they throw the boules, how the game is scored..... The guy in the red shirt had a very individual way of throwing his boules, where his left arm kind of moved as if of its own accord up and behind his back, hand facing out, while his right hand moved back and then flicked the boule forward giving it a bit of spin! Fascinating!

Cakes finished we wandered off round the town, to see the church with its twisted spire - not as tall as the one in -is it Chichester? - which twisted due to the way it was built. I haven't found out if this spire was the same or not. In fact it's not mentioned in any of the websites I have looked at, though one written in French did make mention of the shape, only I don't know what heliocoidal means!!!!! I rather think it was built this way!

Inside the church were some lovely stained glass windows. I took a photo of this one with the sun streaming through, making coloured reflections on the sill and floor. Trying to capture them in photos wasn't easy. There were also paintings on the wall, ancient or modern I am not sure, though I thought at the time they were old. I don't know all the names of the saints but I particularly liked the statue of a man holding a young child in his arms. What was more, there was a beautiful lace edging on the altar cloth! (Those of you who know me, know lacemaking is one of my hobbies). Another statue was of the triumph of good over evil. *With the light shining on it, highlighting and bringing the statue into relief, I took a photo that I think is charged with atmosphere!

Back out into the street and we just wandered, past the little meteorite museum, down this street and along that one, looking at shops and the old buildings. How about a doorway like this one?

Here was a floriste, (tourist info office reflected in the window!) there a boulanger, selling bread baked in a wood fired oven. We even found the local Co-op and met one or two animals en route too! Here's the fluffy little Lhasa Apso pup who was so pleased to be fussed over, and here's another cat, with beautiful colourings! (Talking about cats, Ian worried all day about how his little CC would be getting on! She was fine, but glad to see us when we got home, by the way.)

So another day passed! I was enjoying myself so much that I couldn't bear to think that my visit would soon be over. However I still had one full day left, and a different direction in which to travel. Go west, young man! Well the young man and woman are not so young now, but next day we did go west! Ian must have kept the best till last, because the chateau we saw that day was the most spectacular! You'll see next time! Sorry it's taken me so long to get this next episode on the road, as it were, but I have been busy with other stuff - very mundane stuff really - and because my computer is so slow just now, websites I wanted to look into before writing, were taking ages to open. I've enjoyed the research almost as much as the visits themselves. Well, not quite! I enjoyed the visits tremendously, but it is good to know more about the places I have seen!

Well, I must finish off now.
Talk again soon.