Sunday 25 May 2008

The church of St Hilaire

This is the most significant of the churches at Melle, dedicated to St Hilaire (Hilary of Poitiers). It was visited by pilgrims travelling to Santiago de Compostela on the route from Paris.

There were four main routes that people travelled in medieval times. The westernmost came from Paris via Tours; the next from Vezelay went via Limoges; the third, starting at Le Puy, went through Conques; and the fourth, from Arles, went through Toulouse. In coming back to our base at Lasse, we have driven diagonally across all four of these routes - avid followers of this blog may remember that I started my travels in Tours several weeks ago, which is less than 50 miles from here.