From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

It's been a fairly uneventful week this week as far as antiquing goes.  Lots of hard work on the house, Spike feeding the hoards at the Cognac Blues Passions Festival and for me some part-time seasonal work at a lovely local gite complex (more spending money for trucs... hooray!) so as a consequence I've not had a moment spare to buy any new stock this week or concentrate on my Etsy shop.

However, I knew that a week like this would come one day so I've been saving this post for a situation just like this.

A couple of months back in the beginning of May we stumbled across a truly magical place after visiting a flea market in a little village called Plassay.

A bit of a small brocante but good to get out and about all the same

It wasn't the best market ever but we bought a couple of trucs and on the way had earmarked a lovely little restaurant with a pretty courtyard in the charming village of Port d'Envaux for lunch.  We decided to sit outside and the sun came out for us - it was one of the first really sunny days we had had this year and I decided to try some locally produced goats cheese... it was yummy!  

Spike insists that I use the "fuzzy" setting on my camera for all food shots!

I digress.  The thing I really wanted to share was the amazing place I mentioned earlier. As we left Port-d'Envaux we caught sight of a couple of stone sculptures and being intrigued pulled over to investigate. There was a distinct lack of signs or obvious publicity but the unassuming car park led to a place where artists from all over the world have visited and carved some awe inspiring sculptures into the natural rock face of the area.  I later found out that that this curious centre of art is called Les Lapidiales.

I can't really describe just how impressive these carvings were especially as they were found so unexpectedly on a quiet little road -  I just hope that my photographs of just a handful of them go some way to doing them justice.

It never ceases to amaze me the wondrous things we come across just driving around our area and this place appears to be one of its best kept secrets.  

As we set off for home Spike spotted a little sign indicating that a roman aqueduct was to be found down a small lane.  Well we couldn't miss out on that and with visions of towering archways built out of stone carrying water at a great height I have to admit that we were a little disappointed at what we found!

Not quite what we had hoped for but the mosquitoes seemed to like it!

Oh well you can't win them all!