We had an amazing breakfast buffet at La Verrière, including the usual croissants, pains au chocolat, bread, jams, and yogurts. There was fruit, a machine and little timers so you could soft boil your egg, fruits, and, most amazingly, scrambled eggs and sausage. After checking out, we set out on another day's touring.
We started at the Abbey in Chancelade, where our château was, which we'd skipped the day before. This was once a huge complex, but many of the buildings are gone now. The lower part of the church is all that remains from the 12C church. This is the entrance with the its modillioned cornice. (We had to look that up too; the modillions are the triangular-ish blocks under the cornice.)
Inside, the nave is very long, but has only no side aisles.
There are many remains of the old wall decoration. Kaye thought these looked like Egyptian slaves.
There were a pair of paintings, of St Christopher and Thomas à Becket, that were partly hidden by the choir stalls.
Ed discovered that you could open doors in the back of the stalls to get the whole picture.
Wall decorations were even visible in some of the ruined outer parts of the church.
On the grounds we found this part of the old wall being swallowed by a tree.
From Chancelade, we joined the Fôret de la Double tour, first through the forest, then back along the river Isle. We stopped next at the 11-12C church in Segonzac.
This is a small church, with a single aisle.
The capitols around the apse are nicely decorated.
We stopped next at the fortified Romanesque church in Siorac-de-Ribérac. The town is so crowded that it was difficult to get a picture there, but there's a lovely view from the road.
By this time we were getting hungry and were looking for someplace to have a small lunch. All we could find were proper restaurants and snackbars that were closed because it's not yet tourist season. It was time for groceries to re-open for the afternoon and we were thinking we'd have to buy sandwich makings somewhere. According to our Michelin guide, Douzillac should have a town hall with a pepper pot and wooden balcony, so it seemed worth a stop so we could learn what a pepper pot was. But the only mairie to be found was modern, and that remains a puzzle.
But in Douzillac we found a restaurant that was closing for the mid-afternoon but was willing to serve us some sandwiches. And really nice sandwiches they were too, eaten on the sidewalk terrace. And the house dog enjoyed meeting Pogo. She barked and barked until they met and they she was quiet as could be.
Across the street was this building, which was interesting for the tiny windows near the level of the tops of the doors. These windows are usually found much lower over old stone sinks and are said to be a place to pass food through to workers outside. This doesn't seem very reasonable, actually, but that's the only function we've found for them. However, these are so high, that's not a very likely story.
From here we returned to Chancelade and the highway homewards, making note of several museums that will be worth a return visit in day-trips. We came prepared with a grocery list, so did our shopping, stopped by the doctor's open hours to refill prescriptions, and went home to make our dinner.
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