War and Wet

War memorial. La Romieu, September 2017.

The war memorial in La Romieu is a history of modern France.The war of 1870 – 1871 was the Franco-Prussian war. The First World War saw huge loss of life but in the Second World War only one man died. English memorials tend to be more balanced between the two World Wars. The war in Indo-China was from 1946 to 1954 and the US should have learnt from France not to get involved there.

War memorial. La Romieu, September 2017.

This is the last post from Gascony. On Saturday we drove for two hours west into the Tarn. It poured with rain all the way. I don’t know how to adjust the wing mirrors on the Avis VW Polo or how to operate the rear window wiper. The steering wheel is impregnated with buttons and switches. I haven’t discovered what any of them do.

By the afternoon the weather cleared and we took a walk along a forested ridge and down to this chapel. The trees were festooned with lichen and cobwebs that had tiny caterpillars on them. It was damp, green and mossy; Gothic romantic  glades.

Reginald, bottom left, makes his first appearance on this website.