Les Plus Beaux Villages de France — the most beautiful villages in France — is an association founded in 1982 "for the promotion of the tourist appeal of small rural villages with a rich cultural heritage." That's how Wikipedia describes it. Arlempdes in the Haute- Loire (Auvergne) is one of the villages that is a member. I'm not sure when it earned that honor.
I've been doing some research and reading about Arlempdes, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of information about the village available on the internet. It is very small, after all, with just about 135 inhabitants. And it's pretty isolated, though it's only about four miles (7 km) off a main north-south highway, the N88, and only about 25 miles south of Le Puy-en-Velay, the area's biggest town.
This is the village church's bell tower in Arlempdes. I've read that it was added on long after the church was built in the 1100s or 1200s. You can also see it in the other two photos in this post.
On another subject entirely: Yesterday I took Bertie the black cat to the veterinary clinic for his annual checkup and vaccination. The vet who saw us was the same woman who received us when our border collie, Callie, had to be put to sleep in 2017 (link to this post, and the two before it are about that terrible time too.) I wrote about the whole experience at the time, and I posted a copy of the kind sympathy letter that the vet wrote to us after Callie was gone. To my surprise, she told me yesterday that she was surfing the web not long ago and she came upon my blog post. She teared up slightly when we talked about that day nearly two years ago. I probably did too.
How lucky you are with your vet. What a lovely woman!
ReplyDeleteI second what Susan says.
ReplyDeleteI will miss our poodles always, but we do get to spend time with our daughter's Rosie which helps.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you've found a wonderful vet. Our vet, too, was wonderful. Rocky was 18 when the end came and our vet had known us for a few years before we got him -- from when we had our second cat. He had seen our children grow up, too, so when we we told him we would not be taking on another cat, we all cried.
ReplyDelete