Wednesday, October 29, 2014

OCTOBER MEANDERINGS

On perhaps the last beautiful day of our été indien we headed for the hills this week and returned to one of our favorite perches, the twelfth century donjon overlooking a meander of the Seine at the village of La Roche-Guyon. From a lookout window in the donjon, above, we captured a river barge. The tower's 250-step chiseled spiral stairway leads up a steep, ancient tunnel excavated in the chalk cliff. From the top is a commanding view--even though the fortified tower today is only half it's original 38-meter height. Below, a view from a road stop on the same plateau. 



Vocabulary
un méandre: a meander, an oxbow
un colimaçon: a spiral staircase
un donjon: a donjon, i.e. a massive inner tower in a medieval castle

©2014 P.B. Lecron

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