Back to a wet and windy autumn

We're back from our travels in France, we had far too nicer time and the weather has been very unkind since we returned.

Still the upside is we've been catching up with our children and grandchildren, whom I'm very pleased to say missed us a lot while we were on our 5 week treck.

2 little people who definitely missed us were our youngest grandchildren, Sam and Pippa.....

I was a bit worried that they might have forgotten us, it had been almost 8 weeks since we'd seen them, but as soon as the front door was opened, Sam reached for his granddad and gave him a huge cuddle, refusing to leave his side for the whole weekend.

As for Pippa, she couldn't have given me a wider smile if she tried, followed by lots of lovely cuddles all weekend.

While we were staying in Cardiff our son had managed to get tickets for all of us to go to the Doctor Who Experience, which one's the alien ? 

We had a wonderful time, Sam's new phrase is now,  "it's amazing", he was such a brave boy, he got right to the end, after experiencing take off in the Tardis, landing on a new planet, going through a very creepy graveyard that scared nanny half to death, but the last 3D effects of scary monsters and nasty scary people was just too much for him. 

I couldn't resist taking a pic of this lovely notebook, and it's real notes too, not just that filler Latin text....and how about the those shoes?

We had a fabulous weekend, it was so nice to catch up, as was the first weekend when we arrived home. It's lovely going to all these wonderful inspiring places but there's nothing to compare with the warmth and love you get from you family on your return. Thank you all, we missed you too.

Back to the Loire Valley and longing for lace

From Martel we moved slowly North until we got to the Loire Valley, the land of chateaux around every corner.

This is Loches and although we didn't go in it was really beautiful from the outside.

These lambs were pretty stunning too on one of the  tombs in the church.

Next stop, Amboise with this wonderful chapel perched on top of the battlements.

Plenty of textiles to admire here...

And amazing architectural challenges for sketching. 

Beautiful lighting through the stained glass window in the chapel. 

We finished our architectural visits with the Abbey at Fontevraud, somewhere I'd wanted to go for a very long time. It didn't disappoint!

The scale of the chapel was enormous and very earie with no furniture inside. 

This is one of the murals in the Chapter House.

But my lasting memory will be this amazing light installation by the artist Claude Lévéque. It was staged in the enormous upper dormitory that would have been occupied by the nuns.

And this was my favourite  building, a smokehouse/kitchen with fish shaped scales on the roof, and wonderful quirky faces, etc keeping guard.

Yesterday we were in Saumur for a visit to my favourite lace shop, the lady there makes such wonderful creations. But we had to walk 3 miles there on a river walk from our Camping Car Aire. 7 miles in total if you count walking round the town. That's dedication .......

 

We are now in Alencon the home of beautiful French Lace, and I'm so excited to be making another visit tomorrow.

Thanks once again to everyone whose been following my posts, I will respond to all your comments soon.