After the positive experience of the Angouleme visit I was keen to build on our success so booked us in for another little jaunt, just two nights this time down in the department of the Gers.

For many years I had been fascinated by the centre of art and photography located in the bastide town of Lectoure. It seemed to have some super exhibitions and I had begun following it on Instagram and my appetite was whetted by some stunning images from the current exhibition entitled ‘l’ete photographique’, the photographic summer.

We hadn’t visited before as it was too far away for a day trip but didn’t seem to warrant a longer stay. After the year we had had I decided this was the time to go and satisfy my curiosity…and hope the poorly one would agree. Fortunately he did!

Booking.com only seemed to have hotels several kilometers out of town but I found a Logis de France in Fleurance, another bastide town just down the road from Lectoure. I booked a wheelchair friendly room again and, despite finding very little useful information on the Lectoure art and photography centre website, crossed my fingers it would all be ok!

The journey down was very straightforward and it was only when we left the motorway we began to realise just how empty and rural the area was. Fields of maize followed those of sunflowers with occasional stretches of millet. In one place as we passed, teams of workers were lifting plastic sheets as they advanced down the field. We wondered what was being harvested. On our return two days later they were still in the same fields but with trailers loaded with melons.

Yet again we were given the first room just beyond the reception area of the hotel. A lovely big room with a well appointed bathroom and even a tiny terrace beyond our patio door.

We ate in the hotel that evening in an echoing dining room with just one other couple, having decided against the terrace outside on account of the menace of mosquitos that the continuing warm weather was propagating.

As per, we spent a restless night despite our comfy bed. The next morning we decided to explore the centre of Fleurance and find lunch somewhere as the musee in Lectoure didn’t open until 3pm.

Despite it seeming a busy place we were able to park very easily smack in the middle of town close to the stunning stone Halle.

The Fleurance tourist office lady was very helpful but unable to give us much information about the summer photography exhibition in Lectoure, telling us the tourist office in that town would have all we needed and would sell us tickets for it too. A bit odd, I thought, but if that’s the way it is…

We went off to look at the church of Saint Laurent, himself using his ‘canne anglais’ rather than his wheelchair. There were huge and slippy steps down into the nave so I went in on my own. I was impressed with the immensity of the columns supporting the roof.

Drinking coffee in a lively cafe across from the Halle we ended up booking lunch there after a discussion with our waitress who told us she was usually the chef. Then, never ones to miss a retail opportunity, off we went to do some clothes shopping in the small commercial centre on the edge of the town.

Lunch was a jolly affair, sitting in the shade of the arcades watching the cafe tables fill up all around us and revelling in being part of normal life after weeks of thinking these sorts of activities were all behind us.

It was a short drive up to Lectoure, mmm… up. That was a surprise, I hadn’t twigged that from my Google earth searches. Parking by the cathedral I quickly found the tourist office, bought our tickets, (reduced) and discussed the programme with the young chap on the desk. It became clear that the exhibition was spread around town and that one venue was actually closed.

I stomped back to the car in a strop, after sticking my head inside the cathedral of St.Gervais and St Protais. We have often visited photo exhibitions that are spread about a particular town and have been able to organise our visits beforehand using information from the relevant website. This was particularly important given our present circumstances but had been impossible due to a lack of available information. Now we had to work out what was possible to visit and how to find it, made difficult by the not very clear town plan on the programme.

It seemed sensible to start at the centre of art and photography but how to get there? The gps kept trying to take us up no entries and eventually out of town! More by luck than judgement we finally found it, a tiny turning on the roundabout as we came into the town (in case anyone else is visiting). Happily, parking was easy and we weren’t far from the tourist office after all that.

The wheelchair came out as it looked like the distances were a bit too much for just the cannes but Lou managed to get himself around the two floors of the gallery. The lift was freely accessible, thank goodness. I was disappointed that there was only one photographer, Lisetta Carmi, featured in the centre but a very good one all the same. Lots of black and white photos of everyday life in Italy in the 1970s. I was excited to see Alberobello in Puglia which we had visited in 2012.

From there I pushed and Lou rattled (cobbles again) towards the next and nearest expo. Having struggled to get himself and the chair up a flight of stone steps it was annoying that we found ourselves watching a video in a cellar of two people debating. My translation skills with the programme were letting me down.

Up another flight of steps and across a garden to find the photos around the abandoned Lectoure swimming pool. But to get close to them was down yet another flight of dilapidated and broken stone steps, which even I went down very gingerly. Leaving the poorly one in the garden (the wheelchair was in the care of the bored girl looking after the video in the cellar!) I took in the view as well as the art.

The effort to retrieve the wheelchair, bump it down the steps and then get ourselves back up the hill to the main road by the cathedral meant we were reluctant to visit the last two exhibitions, neither of which the programme described particularly clearly and both of which involved going down the hillside again. Time for cold drinks and a rethink.

We opted to call it a day. Delivery vans, cobbled pavements and high kerbs make pushing a wheelchair a less than pleasant experience. But the sun was shining and Lectoure is a pretty town and we had had a lovely morning in Fleurance. Curiosity satisfied it was time to call it a day.

By the car I found conkers, autumn was making itself felt.

That night we ate on the terrace despite the mozzie menace, as there might not be many more warm evenings when we could enjoy al fresco dining.

On the way to Fleurance we had used the car’s gps despite being aware of its idiosyncrasies. It tried to persuade us to leave the autoroute as we travelled south towards Montauban but we stood firm and continued on and swung west onto the A65 towards Bordeaux. When we left it to travel across all those sunflower and maize fields the gps very quickly took us on a goat track deviation, as I call them, an entirely unnecessary three or four kilometres that ultimately dropped us back on the road we had left. But…it did take us through a tiny village that looked interesting. I noted the name to Google later on, Saint-Antoine.

I discovered that Saint-Antoine is a recognised stop on one of the three Compostela routes across France, this one being the Via Podensis starting at Le Puy. The church is celebrated for its painted interior and for a recently discovered medieval fresco which is still in the process of being restored. I was hooked!

I warned himself that we would be stopping .. briefly…so I could make quick visit to see this little gem for myself.

And a gem it was, probably recently refurbished as the colours on the interior surfaces were bright and breathtaking. I had passed a group of pilgrims outside the village auberge, identifiable by the scallop shells attached to their enormous backpacks. One of their number came into the church while I was there and, being me, after the obligatory bonjours, I asked how far she intended to walk.

Not quite all the way, she said, as her feet were causing some problems but the others hoped to make it to the end. As for how long, it would be four months. Quite a commitment, she told me, especially as it will mean walking in the winter months. Four months! I wished her ‘bon courage’ and told her how much I admired her.

I took a few more photos, especially pleased when I finally identified the poor dragon being pierced by St George on the fresco, and hurried back to the car, yet again feeling very thankful that there are still such unexpected discoveries to be made as we travel along.

NB the building that had caught my attention originally was the arched north gate and nearby tower, the remains of a commanderie probably built in the 17th century. both it and the church are listed as French monuments historique. The village was founded in 1146 by Antonin monks who built a hospital although nothing remains of it according a website run by the friends of Saint Antoine

https://www.les-amis-des-antonins.com