Paper

A beautiful day, with lots of sunshine. We set off on a trip that Gordon had planned to take in some of the local Bastides (fortified towns) and other things along the way. We lingered awhile (sat with coffee) in Beaumont, which is a typical Bastide built around a square and fortified on the outside, but it is less well-known that others. Then we found a Dolmen (megalithic tomb) which we remembered from our previous visit. In fact we have photos of the two girls climbing all over it. 

Then we came upon Couze-et-St-Front, which was once an important paper-making centre. Although we had read that one of the mills (there were once 13 mills) was still working, we had not realised that there were several of the buildings preserved and one could walk around them. In the picture there are a few of the buildings, some of them quite beautiful, some of them built into the cliff face. The mills used power provided by the River Couze and here you can see one of the water courses that were created to work the wheels. The building on the left on the roadside was the chiffonerie (rags room) where rags were stored and processed for the pulp. It was all fascinating, but we were too early for entrance into the working mill and it was too hot to wait around. In fact we felt we had had enough, cut short the trip and returned to our house with its shady garden and pool.