Fontevraud Abbey

In its time, the biggest religious foundation in Europe, with lands and daughter houses as far as Droitwich.

In relatively recent times it was used as a prison, but has now been extensively restored, and receives huge numbers of visitors every year.

An appropriate place for a pilgrim

12th century priory overlooking the River Loire - wonder if it matters that it's now a hotel with a fantastic restaurant? Very good lunch anyway!

View of the Loire

This is the view we enjoyed while we enjoyed our lunch. I've never seen the Loire so full - no sand banks showing at all. It must have been as wet in France as in England.

Hopeful or hopeless?

When I was sending an email yesterday, I wanted to say 'hopefully', but as I typed in 'hope' the predictive text immediately offered me 'hopeless' and 'hopelessly'. It seems a sad reflection on modern life that we more often say 'hopeless' than 'hopeful'. The good thing is that I was offered 'hopeful' first today!

Perhaps if we are hopeful, we can transmit it to others. The Gospel is the greatest hope tnere is, after all!

Communication

Is our modern need to communicate with one another all the time a basic human need or just another distraction?

Because I still don't know why this fancy phone went wrong, it seemed sensible to buy a cheap French mobile in to keep in touch in case I have more problems.

Buying a mobile here is more like opening a bank account in England - needs all sorts of proofs of identity, including address. And it can't be an English address, but must show where one has been in France in last 3 months! A 40 mile round trip from Saumur to Lasse and back produced a piece of paper which the young man in the shop reluctantly accepted. So I came away with a nice new phone - trouble is, it will only allow me to call numbers in France, so I'm not much further forward! What is this EU that people keep talking about?!

When I travelled with my family as a child, it was impossible to phone home, and we usually got back before the post-cards, but that never seemed to worry anyone. Now that we are able to communicate all the time, we lose our security if we can't. I suppose I should be grateful that I can still go to the supermarket without the urge to ring Roger and ask what he wants for supper!

Modern Technology Again!

I've been off air for the last couple of days as the wonderful all singing all dancing phone's been playing up. The service provider kept trying to blame the French networks but, 100 years' war not withstanding, I don't think the French were stopping me turning it on!

Have now managed to get it going by (divinely?) inspired fiddling - but for how long???

The sun's shining!

Today is the first time that the weather has been nice, and the forecast is for rain again tomorrow, so I've taken the opportunity to photograph the church in the village.

Lasse isn't mentioned in any of the books I've read about the Compostela pilgrimage, but it is a very big church for a small village, and the information inside says that people came here to pray to St Meen. He was thought to be particularly good at curing certain childhood diseases.

Tours was the main crossing place for the Loire for pilgrims coming from northern Europe, but it was also possible to cross at Saumur, which is only one or two days' journey south of here.