La Réole

Tomorrow, we drive North to Caen, and thence home. This morning, six of us Old Amplefordians, with others of the party, were at mass at La Réole. Afterwards, we explored what was once the Benedictine priory on the banks of the Garonne. In the lantern roof above one of its monumental staircases a monk is pictured with a mitre at his feet - hands upstretched as if to say, "Oh I've dropped it." It is in fact Saint Abbon de Fleury, who died at La Réole a millennium ago, "in ecstasy".