France again

Ian and I took several drives out to visit different places, several small attractive towns with interesting names, narrow streets, the houses close together or touching, with their main doors opening onto the street, window boxes and plant pots – looking sad and sorry after the  energy the plants put into summer flowering - still sitting on sills or pavement by the doors.  Now there were  Christmas lights, decorations

 and branches of fir

 

 

 

 

tied to down-pipes at intervals along the streets and adorned with huge shiny paper bows or fans, maybe even hung with faux parcels of the same shiny paper. They weren’t sophisticated, but in their way rather attractive.   I gather that the local council  put up the branches and the local residents do the ornamenting.  Nice touch!

 

 

In most of the villages there were avenues of trees, pollarded each year, looking like lumpy gnarled fists reaching from solid tree trunks.

They too looked pretty strung with coloured lights.  Oops, these aren’t pollarded!  Still pretty though!

 

 

 

 

We saw churches,often at the highest point of the town overlooking their parishioners,

 

at Montmorillon

 

 

and Verteuil

 

 

 

   and chateaux, large like this one, also at Verteuil,

 

 

 

 

…and smaller but nonetheless imposing ones like Villevert near Confolens ,

 

 

 

impressive town halls as in Cognac…….

 

 

and talking of Cognac

 

 

we explored the centre of that town and neighbouring Jarnac (twinned with Dalkeith, a town not terribly far from where I live here in Scotland).

Here were the famous names of the brandy giants: Courvoisier, 

 

 

 

and Hennessy, for example.

 

 

 

 

I liked Jarnac, and have chosen the wee house I would like, tucked right in beside Courvoisier’s walls with a boat to access the river that runs alongside, and a covered terrasse for sunny days…..

 

the cake shop and chocolatier nearby….

 

a perfect spot!

 

In fact Ian and I couldn’t believe that we  could actually sit outside a Jarnac cafe bar drinking hot chocolate on  12 December, but it was a beautiful and unusually mild day so we made the most of it..

We weren’t to know it then but temperatures were to plummet a few days later and  scarf, gloves and hat would have been welcome additions to the accessories wardrobe.

In my next post I will show you more photos, but that’s all for today.

Talk again soon.