Sun setting over Blandy les Tours

Sunday
This morning we went to church - the English-speaking church in Fontainebleau. The church is currently without a permanent chaplain, but today was the first Sunday with our new locum who will be with us for almost four months. He had previously been living in Belgium and had visited several of the World War sites there, so he chose to focus his Remembrance Sunday address on Flanders Field.

In Flanders Field

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae

After a quick lunch, we got out to enjoy the sunny, though quite cold, afternoon at Blandy les Tours, a picturesque village, with an imposing 13th and 14th century fortified medieval castle at its center. The castle is flanked by five towers and a keep. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the fortress gradually lost its military purpose and became a residential castle. Beginning in 1992, the Seine et Marne general council bought the fortress and undertook a vast restoration operation. You can climb to the top of the keep, which affords beautiful views over the surrounding countryside, and walk around the castle walls. My blip was taken as we were leaving, and the stone walls were bathed in the warm golden glow of the setting sun.

One year ago: Clifton Gorge