It rained all night, or felt like it did. We are parked under a tree and so the drip, drip was pretty much all night. Not that is bothers us at all - we generally sleep like babies.
Decided to re-organise the van again both in the garage and on board. It does make you feel much better and ready to take on the day. As we were getting through our chores, the sun came out and we decided to walk to Oust which is in the opposite direction to Seix. We had to walk along a main road which isn’t much fun with the dog in tow, so heaved a sigh of relief as we reached the much smaller side road that leads to the centre of the village. Spoke too soon as it happens - a blue Merle border collie come out of farmhouse with some smaller dogs behind him - it all happened quite quickly but I must have sensed this wasn’t a friendly approach and managed to alert Alan who is upfront at this point - I have Tom with me - just as that happened the dog went for Tom and had a go at his side - he meant business. Luckily Alan got between us and the dog and prompted me to go on quickly with Tom who was pretty shaken by the encounter. We were able to get some distance and checked the boy out - he was fine but a bit skittish for a while. We spoilt him with some gravy bones and a nice drink of water. And in a while he was fine. Lovely little village on the river again - not a lot of life here though. I had a good old nose in the local church as I tend to do. It was quite a surprise to go in the front entrance and find almost life size, highly decorated statues of St Michael on one side and Joan of Arc on the other. Inside the church it was much the same. Very dark statues of a Friar and what I think was the Virgin Mary. The painted walls are here again but not on a par with those I have encountered thus far on our journey. I did want to say a little something about the Cemeteries here which are - excuse the pun - monumental. When we first arrived and travelled through France, you could not help but notice the huge crosses, and religious statues that are packed into these spaces. After much nosing around and a bit of research it would appear that a family will buy a plot in their ’home’ cemetery and that is then used to house all those who come after. Set upon the family tomb are little plaques - placed at different times. It might be an anniversary of a birthday or some such thing. They are not always marked other than with a picture of a landscape, or the outline of a man and his dog. Or maybe some china or even plastic flowers. It is really touching to go walking amongst these huge stones. Every town or village has an outlet for the purchase of these items, sometimes combined with a funeral parlour. I suppose I find it fascinating that in the UK we are rapidly running out of space for burial and Gravestones to the lost are not so practical, so many people are opting for cremation on a purely practical level and the scattering ashes as opposed to the burial of them, saves space and is considered the ‘greener’ option. Just my own observations here of course. Anyway, Alan navigated a route back to the site which would avoid the ninja Collie and he happened upon a little bar come restaurant. Honestly, I wouldn’t have stopped there - it was so uninspiring to look at - but my man spotted there was life inside and went on in. It wasn’t long before he appeared with a couple of beers. We sat outside as our Tomdog couldn’t go in on this occasion. We had a look at the menu and, bolstered by our beers, decided to have the Menu of the day. The lady came out and set the table, Alan ordered a bottle of vino and we were in Lalaland quite quickly. The starter was a green salad garnished with bacon lardons, mains was lamb for me and beef for Alan; I had cheese for dessert and Alan had Tiramisu (nice french dessert 😂). What a super way to spend a couple of hours in the French sunshine. There were men working on a house renovation on the opposite side of the road, and they had a cement mixer going for most of the time we were there - the more wine we drank, the less noisy it seemed ..................
We were pretty full up after our escapade and made our way back to the van. The weather has stayed dry for the rest of the day, we were even able to sit out for a little while. However, the light is going so I nice light supper tonight. Nighty night
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