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  • Day 424

    Day 425: Heading North via Saint-Savin

    April 15, 2018 in France ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    Lots of driving today! Headed north for a few hours to the town of Saint-Savin, where we visited a World Heritage listed church. It's known as the Sistine Chapel of Romanesque art, as the interior has a large barrel vaulted ceiling covered in frescoes of religious scenes. Very impressive!

    We were about to pay the 10 euros to access the complex, but the lady selling tickets told us the church was for free and the tickets were only really for the gardens and the rest of the abbey! We had it on good authority that the rest of the complex was fairly uninteresting and that the frescoes were easily the highlight, so that saved us a bunch of time!

    Continued on our way north and stopped at a little village known as L'Anglin. It turned out to be one of the prettiest villages in France with an old ruined castle, a creek, some bridges and stone houses, and of course lots of flowers now that spring has finally arrived. We had a coffee and tea in a British tea-room in the centre of the village, along with a proper English scone (jam and cream included!).

    More driving for another hour and we finally arrived at our accommodation for the evening, at a farmhouse in the Loire Valley. Our hosts are quite nice and gave us a large goat's cheese quiche/tart thing for dinner, along with some of their home-made wine - very nice!

    The internet wasn't quite up to scratch, so we drove about 20 minutes into a nearby town and had an evening drink at a bar overlooking the Loire and a magnificent chateau on the opposite bank. More of that to come tomorrow!
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