Return to Combleux

One day in late June when the girls were in school, Dave and Cricket drove with Dave's parents, Jim and Louise, to Combleux to walk along the canal there as we had done in October (as described in a previous post). One of the reasons we went back there was to have lunch at a cute outdoor restaurant called La Marine we had found there in October and to which we had hoped to return someday. Fortunately, we had beautiful weather and so we were able to enjoy a fantastic lunch at the halfway point in our stroll. Here is a picture of Jim and Louise sitting at lunch.

We noticed a couple of things that had changed since our walk in October. Most notably, the parking lot where we left the car was paved and beautifully landscaped this time, whereas in October it had merely been a vacant lot and construction was just beginning. Little observations like this make us feel good, like we're really LIVING here rather than merely visiting.

Besides returning to the cute little restaurant, this time we went inside the église Saint-Jean-Baptiste (church of Saint John the Baptist) in Combleux, shown here. Construction on this church began between 1143 and 1147 (!). We really liked this church; like the Collégiale Saint-Liphard we visited in Meung-sur-Loire, it seems a great deal more welcoming than the mega-cathedrals found in some of the larger cities. There is something about the smaller (yet still pretty darn big, let's face it) scale that simply makes these churches feel as though they would be more effective as churches.