Mundane? Or should that be mundrain?

I spotted this ornate water spout and drain cover in the old part of the small French port of Honfleur:

Mundane Mondays #100

C is for Ceiling

The fresco on the ceiling of the Collègiale church in St Junien is very faded, so you’re not missing much by seeing it only in monochrome:

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Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: the letter C or D

Thursday Doors: Confolens (2)

As promised last week, another instalment of doors from Confolens, this time featuring ones that have had at least some care and attention within living memory.

Starting with these white ones:

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Bonus points for a door within a door?

This one, with the attractive ironwork, is the former residence of a local physician:

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A closer look at the plaque above the door (no need for a translation) suggests that he was a good man:

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This house is unoccupied, although doesn’t seem to have been for too long:

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Next week, how about some gates for a change?

Thursday Doors 9 March 2017

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wish

“And you: what’s your dream?”

This graffito was spotted on a wall in the city of Limoges.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wish

Tuesdays of Texture: Coin

On a wet afternoon last week I was roaming the house with my macro lens and got this close-up image, which revealed the interesting texture of the central inset.

We must have picked up this Jordanian half-dinar coin when we visited Petra, almost five years ago.

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Don’t get too excited: it’s worth about 70 US cents, or £0.65.

Tuesdays of Texture

52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 30 – In The Distance

The Charente river, in western France, is lined with impressive chateaux, of which this is one of the prime examples:

52 Weeks Photo Challenge: Week 30 – In The Distance

Mundane? Webs

A sure sign that a building is unoccupied is to look for spiders’ webs. It doesn’t take long for the spiders to reclaim their territory, as in this window in the medieval back streets of Confolens. To judge from the old stickers, this particular place was last owned or run by a motor mechanic (although obviously not a medieval one).

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Mundane Mondays

B is for Bear – and Bathroom

Looks like we’ll be going through the alphabet over the next few months with Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge. Naturally enough, we start with A or B, so as a special introductory offer here are two Bs for the price of one.

I freely admit that it was a little unsettling the first time I went into this bathroom at a hotel in Paris to be confronted by a Polar Bear. Fortunately, it was only an image on the door of the shower cubicle and I should have been forewarned because I’d already seen one on the wall over the bed.

And that’s really weird.

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Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: A or B

Thursday Doors: Confolens

After four weeks of the doors of St Junien, I suspect we’re all ready for a bit of a change of scenery so today the caravan has packed up and moved on to the town of Confolens, in the neighbouring Charente département. Like St Junien, Confolens has a modern shell around a medieval core, and it’s also on a river, in this case the Vienne, but overall – at least in my opinion – it’s a lot more scenic.

There’s plenty to look at, especially in the older part, so I might as well crack on with this first instalment, beginning with some characteristic sixteenth-century exteriors (in the UK, we’d call this ‘Tudor’).

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Maintaining the careworn theme:

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Although so as not to give the impression that the whole place is just falling to bits, here are a couple of more dignified – and blue – examples:

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More from Confolens next week: perhaps some doors that have found themselves a good home.

Thursday Doors 2 March 2017

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Road Taken

It doesn’t matter that you know it’s there. The first sight of the Nabatean treasury at Petra, as the long, narrow path of the Siq opens up to reveal the ‘rose red’ ruined city is almost guaranteed to take your breath away.

The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge asks for something that conveys “the excitement, surprise, wonder, or amazement of your ‘road taken’.”

I reckon tthis qualifies:

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Road Taken