Civray visit

As I have blogged before, our latest form of Sunday afternoon amusement is to visit local spots we don`t know well, and last Sunday the lot fell on Civray, a medium size town across in the Vienne. In fact I was confusing it with Charroux, a town with an interesting octagonal tower.  Perhaps next week?  However Civray didn`t lack for things to see, so the error was not serious,
  Civray`s chief attraction is the great church of St. Nicholas, which boasts three finely-carved doorways, the central one is shown to the right. It also has a handsome octagonal tower to let light into the crossing. However, we found the interior rather dim and depressing. This was largely caused by the fact that the interior of the church has been painted in a striped, spiral pattern, curiously resembling Brighton rock!  Very strange and it does cut down on the luminosity.( see photo on right).
   Still, the interior is interesting, impressive even and has some ancient frescoes. The statue of St Nicholas is identical to the one in our Catholic church of St Margaret Mary at Plymstock.  I wonder if there is a factory turning the images out?
  Round the side of the Church is a small chapel with a note saying the priest doesn`t live there but in the bungalow at the bottom of the garden..Then, further round behind the church is a very pleasant park along the banks of the Charente where we strolled for some time. Among the houses on the other side of the river was one belonging to a sculptor with a sample of his work representing, if I am not mistaken, an octopus.

Now if I were to take up sculpture the very last subject I would be inspired to adopt would surely be an octopus!  Still, there`s no accounting for tastes, I suppose...
   Wandering back to the car, we admired the large central square and an impressive hotel de Ville before turning for home. We had enjoyed our afternoon`s  exploring.

Bye for now!