The church at Auzay (Vendée)

We had been in our Vendée gîte for four days in late October, and the day before we had made the long drive to the Île de Noirmoutier and back — four hours round-trip. We were tired. So on this Thursday afternoon, October 25, we decided to drive just the short distance over to the neighboring village of Auzay and take a nice, relaxing walk with the dog.

We parked the Citroën in front of the village church, L'Église Notre-Dame-de-la Nativité. I don't really know much about it, and information on the web is scarce. On the left in the photo is the monument to people from Auzay (pop. 500 or so) who died in World War I and World War II. The village and countryside can be descibed as "bucolic."

Here are three photos of the church in Auzay. It looks like it has recently been cleaned up. Sandblasted, probably. The stone is very white. This is a Romanesque church that dates back to the 11th century and has been modified and enlarged over the centuries.

At this point I'm winding down my series on our trip to the French Atlantic coast between Brittany and Bordeaux. As I've said before, it's comforting to look at all these photos of blue skies and bright sun. The news here yesterday morning was running a report about Paris specifically, and the northern part of France in general, lamenting how skies have been overcast and the weather foggy and gloomy for a couple of weeks now. They said that Paris has had an average of one minute of sunshine per day since the beginning of the month. People are getting fatigued and depressed. The payback for enduring these short, dark days will come as we move toward May and June, with many long hours and days of sunshine and daylight.