Sunday and a day of rest….

Not sure that we had a plan for a rest day or where we might have ventured to today but we headed back to Doreen’s to wait for her plumber and to check on the water leak and drying out process.

Content that all is in hand we returned to our digs for some breakfast and decided to stay about L’Isle-Jourdain. Within 50 yards of our front door are two of the sights to see…. The Bridge of St Sylvian and the chateau whereby the town gets its name so off we went for a walk!

We are the right hand side of the terrace houses below the church… To the right is the bigger house owned by an English couple.

There has been a stone bridge on the site since 1080 but the crossing is much older than that.

It was an important route between Lower Marché and Poitou. It underwent restoration between 1823 and 1829 and was further enlarged in 1875 and 1964. It is 144.6 metres long and has 11 arches and 10 stacks

Bridge of St Sylvian

On the bridge is a statue of Saint Sylvain that was erected on September 24, 1876 and has focused many legends and travellers. He had a reputation for curing the infertility of women and caring for nervous or bawling children. It is said that the martyred corpse of the Saint was thrown into the Vienne at St Junien and rested against one of the bridge supports before it was washed down to Loubressac where a chapel was dedicated to him. Following this, the site became popular with women anxious to conceive, and many prayers were said for a successful pregnancy and also for sick children – needless to say, we tarried only long enough to read the information and take our photographs. 😅😊

The Saint himself where prayers are said to aid pregnancy and heal sick children.

The bridge gives access to a chateau. The town gets its name from one the first lord’s (Jourdain) who built a chateau on the island in the Vienne River. In 1817 a mill was constructed adjacent to the chateau that later became a flour mill in 1873. The mill ceased to operate in 1970.

From the bridge there is a wonderful view of the old railway viaduct.

Built in 1884 and designed by Paul Sejourne to carry the railway forty meters above the river Vienne. The viaduc is three hundred and four meters wide and has twelve arches, each twenty meters wide. Passenger trains stopped running on the 15 May 1939 and freight trains stopped running on this section of the line (Lussac-les-Chateaux – L’Isle-Jourdain) during 1969 and finally stopped between St-Martin-Usson and Charroux during 1990. the track bed is now a long distance footpath.

You can zip-wire through the arches across the river or bungee jump off the viaduct, not for us though!!!

Having crossed the St Sylvian bridge we turned right to the viaduct. There is a path to the left hand side that gives access to cross back to the town. It gives wonderful views of the area.

We walked back through the town…. like many others over the last couple of weeks, it was deserted!

After a bite of lunch and a few hands of Monopoly Deal we took a walk to the left of the house to the left. The Vienne has three dams situated on it for the production of electricity – one of them a short distance from us. La Roche-Millac was built in 1921

and forms a lake where one can go water skiing!