Monday Window: The Church at St-Martial-sur-Isop

I’ve just heard about the #MondayWindow challenge that’s being hosted by Ludwig Keck.

Here is my initial contribution – a stained glass window high up on the wall of the old church in the nearby village of Saint-Martial-sur-Isop.

Monday Window 14 October 2019

Formal Gardens at Chateau Azay-le-Ferron

Topiary at its best.

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Tree Art

Thursday Doors: Bussiere-Poitevine (5 – and final)

This week, we have a final instalment of doors from the nearby village of Bussière-Poitevine.

Particularly notable  in this first example is the characteristic Limousin sink on the right: a common feature of many old buildings around here. In fact we have a couple ourselves.

This is on the main road that runs through the village. It looks like it used to be a shop of some kind, although it’s looked like this for as long as we’ve been coming here (so over fifteen years). The only things you’re likely to see in that window nowadays is a selection of cats.

An equally neglected set of doors (a former workshop?):

In rather better fettle. Note the old postbox:

Just your average green door:

And finally a shout-out to the charity shop where Madame volunteers. I can attest to the quality of the cakes sold in the café – Madame makes a lot of them.

Thursday Doors 10 October 2019

Through a glass, darkly

Detail of the stopper of an antique coloured glass decanter, seen at an exhibition of old glassware and ceramics in our local village.

Posted in response to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Circles, Curves and Arches

Tuesday Photo Challenge – Tourism

No prizes for guessing which popular tourist destination is pictured here:

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Tourism

Not drinking water

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge this week could be said to require some lateral thinking, as she is setting the theme of ‘side of things’.

In the medieval centre of the town of Cahors there is a hexagonal water fountain, with each of the six sides featuring a carving of a different dog’s head. This image shows two of them.

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Side of things

Thursday Doors: Bussiere-Poitevine (4)

A fourth instalment of doors from the village of Bussière-Poitevine. (We’re almost done here, I promise.)

By definition, it wouldn’t be a village if it didn’t have a church:

In last week’s post I showed an old shopfront. Here’s another:

Sometimes you need to look around you a little more carefully than usual to spot some interesting doors, like these two sets of ground-level cellar doors that happen to be opposite each other on the same street:

And down a little endroit:

Just a basic example, although the stonework is quite striking:

Thursday Doors 3 October 2019

Keep Out

I spotted this barred window on an old building in the village of Bussière-Poitevine and it seemed perfect for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week. It reminds me of one of those ‘coffee-time’ magazine puzzles where you have to find as many squares and rectangles as possible in the diagram.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Squares & Rectangles

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Groceries

Frank’s theme for this week’s Tuesday Photo Challenge is in one sense a little out of the ordinary, but in another way could hardly be more mundane – ‘groceries’. So here are some groceries that are a little out of the ordinary: a basket of coloquintes (gourds) that I spotted at an open-air market in the town of Chabanais. They’re nothing if not colourful.

Tuesday Photo Challenge: Groceries

The weight of tradition

Go to any brocante or vide-grenier around these parts and you’ll find plenty of old farming utensils which would nowadays probably be classed as – and only useful for – ‘design pieces’. Almost inevitably,somewhere in the jumble will be an old set of weights – like these:

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Things found on a farm