We started our bike ride again at Chez Larte. Unfortunately most French country churches are kept locked but at Le Douhet, next to a sign marking the route, the Church of St Martial is kept open. Here far from the crowds is a forgotten corner of Cognac country. I knelt at the altar and felt a profound happiness. It came suddenly and it seemed from God.

At Fenioux there is a Lanterne des Morts. Here in times past if ever a villager died a light would be lit at the top of the tower. For a village, the church is enormous, Romanesque. We camped at St Jean d’Angely, the camp site full of caravans and camper vans jarring with the yellow stones of the Romanesque church. The town was founded in 817 when Pippin, grandson of Charlemagne, he brought the skull of St. John the Baptist. The skull is gone, lost, rediscovered, and thrown away in the Revolution but in the church I was soothed by a tune playing Mozart’s Requiem Mass.