A Perfect Surprise

Today's weather was a great improvement on yesterday's and it seems that we made the correct decision to defer our island walk until this morning.

The Île de Vassivière is home to the Centre international d'art et du paysage de Vassivière and the 6 km route around the island is punctuated by contemporary art installations. I do not always get on with contemporary art especially the more conceptual forms. Some of it attracted my camera but it was not until we reached a small beach where I noted that the Andy Galsworthy fans had been visiting (stone rings and rock piles were there in abundance) that I really perked up.

About a hundred metres further on we stumbled across a dry stone wall in the woods. It had a beautiful curve in it. And then we saw the label. We had fallen over a real life, honest to goodness, genuine Andy Galsworthy! Oh, that made my day,

Horribly difficult to capture but I hope I have a flavour of it here. The sinuous wall is in two sections, either side of the path. The top section encloses a number of threes, whereas the lower section is designed to capture the lake water in a curved pool. Sadly for us, the lake water is very low at present and so this section was dry. The water should come over the top of the wall (see here )

Pleased as Punch I was. 

Nell enjoyed her walk and so did we. I am walking better now than I have done for over a year now and it was marvellous to do a longish walk that I actually enjoyed rather than finding it a trial.

After touring the island we made our way through some stunning scenery to our present location at St Germain Les Belles - a really quaint and very old village with a fortified church.