Poiteau Charentes holiday gite owner Susie Kelly is invited on a trip to a local chateau.
Two elderly couples are sharing Lavande, long-standing friends whose passion is religious architecture. They are all scholarly, but at the same time very jolly, and tell me that this area is a veritable treasure chest of delights. The gloomy little village church, the startling décor of the Romanesque church in our nearest town, the splendour of the frescoes at the abbey at St Savin – a UNESCO World Heritage site – and the 4th century Baptistery in Poitiers are all jewels to add to their collection.
From piles of books and maps they plan each day’s excursions with precision, and very kindly invite me to join them for a visit to the fortified abbey at Nouaillé Maupertuis. It’s a stunning medieval building, not far from the battlefield where Edward the Black Prince defeated and captured the French king Jean le Bon at the battle of Poitiers in 1356. With a moat, a medicinal herb garden, a row of tiny cottages, turrets with arrow slots and cobbled alleyways, Nouaillé Maupertuis is both imposing and quaint.
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Nouaille Abbey
Our little party examine every stone, every feature, and talk in hushed, excited tones in a language as foreign to me as Japanese. I am reminded how fortunate we are to live in a part of the world where people come hundreds of miles to admire the various attractions to which we have become blasé and take for granted. We picnic beside the herb garden. While they discuss squinches, pendentives and dosserets I nod wisely. They’ve brought a heavenly spread for our picnic – a lobster terrine, crispy salad, great selection of cheeses, and a box of exquisite petit fours. Two bottles of Sancerre, and a bottle of champagne, plus a bottle of apricot liqueur to mix with the champagne. By the time we’ve scraped up the last morsel and squeezed the bottles dry, we subside one by one and fall asleep on the grass, waking only when the early evening shadows drape themselves over us.
Extract from Swallows & Robins – The Guests In My Garden by Susie Kelly, published Dec 2013 in ebook and paperback by Blackbird Digital Books.
Images:
Description =Nouaillé-Maupertuis
Source =Photo taken by Remi Jouan
Date =Février 2006
Author =Remi Jouan
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