21 oct

We left Saint Point without Rosie. She disappeared after about two days at the campground. Never found her back. Sad.
We drove through the Auvergne towards Poitiers, although we ended up in Montmorillon, being the only not five star campground that is still open in the area. Fascinating pricing strategy here. €0,31 for each person a night, plus a few €’s for camper and car, and €0,31 for Raskel. And €3,47 for electricity. How does anyone come up with that. Oh, there is a discount of 10% for being out of season, which makes the price per person €0,279, which is not available in euro-coins, as far as I know.
We saw two Romanesque churches on our way. I found, when still in Forest Row, an old guide (1962) I had about Romanesq Europe. Reading through it I found out that pages 85-115 were missing (and pages 115-145 printed twice!). Those were of course just the pages about France, so I ordered the book again, making sure that those pages were there. It has a map in it with the highlights of Romanesq France, which I copied onto our road map. On most pages there are suddenly big yellow spots that warn us of something interesting. That’s how we drove to Neuilly en Sovigny, not really knowing what we could expect there. Neuilly-le-Donjon had a lovely Tympanum with some happy guys blowing big horns and a nice girl washing Jesus’ feet when he is attending the Last Supper. Julie says it’s Maria Magdalena, Maria Madeleine here in French.
The other church was a Clunisian Abbey, where abbot Odilon, one of the greatest Clunian abbots was buried, and also some French kings.
Well worth the detour. Our Tomtom got us there over the most mysterious roads, including through a beautiful poplar woods were it rained yellow leaves. Julie and I had been puzzled by the fact that autumn has hardly started in France, while there were already bare trees when we left England in the middle of september. But during this ride to Poitou the autumn suddenly arrived, including some very magic bright red Sumac trees. It reminded even me of Nebraska and of Doesburg in fact, where our neighbours had one
Julie drove Merlin for the first time. It is a little nerve wrecking because the camper shakes like there is no tomorrow. The engine is still so lazy that with a little bit of a hill the speed drops to about 80 km (50 miles). Even trucks pass us then. But I have to say I think keeping the speed at 80 is better than we experienced in the beginning.
So now we are in the Poitou area, which has also more than 200 Romanesq churches I read somewhere. In the 12th century this area, like the whole West of France belonged to England. That is to say, belonged to the king of England, who was also Duke of Aquitane, Count of Anjou and so on. The English kings were in fact more french than english. Richard Lionheart didn’t spend much time in England, hardly spoke english in fact, which is why his real name was Richard Coeur de Lion and he is buried in Fontevraud, an abbey not that far from here. Might need to go and see him, more especially because his Mother Eleanor is also buried there. She was the richest person on earth (western world I come to think) in the twelfth century and was married to as well the King of France, one Louis (who thought she was a flirt and divorced her) as the King of England, Henry II. Fascinating woman.
We will stay in Montmorillon for a week I suppose. Then Julie is going to drive to Barcelona, and I am going to Holland for a conference on asset management. Afterwards I’ll fly to Barcelona and we will continue from there.
Saw numberplates with ’03’ twice, but haven’t seen ’02’ yet, so doesn’t count.