19. Separation of church, from state

Amiens

Sporting Frances largest cathedral Cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens was an essential visit on our trip across the top of France.  With the GPS programmed to avoid motorways from our camp we tootled across beautiful countryside on empty roads for an hour, passing through little 50kph villages every couple of kilometres or so.

Parked by the Somme River in the centre of Amiens

Drove right into the town centre, parking overlooking the Somme River, within five minutes walk of the Cathedral for two euro fifty for an hour and a half.  Was expecting something like Windsor where similar parking is, I recall, eight pounds per hour.

Built largely
in the twelve hundreds, it is absolutely massive, beautiful and, to me, pointless.  I was struck by what an incredible burden it must have been on the community.  With ninety percent of the population peasants on subsistence living it demonstrates the lever the cloth had over the masses.

Though there was extensive maintenance proceeding on the outside the inside had the feel of a disused building.  There were a great number of confessionals of a variety of designs which on closer inspection looked like they hadn't been used for decades.  There was none of the modern church paraphernalia which most churches I have visited around the world usually have indicating a living parish.

Stopped in at a couple of Pharmacies on the way home for more glucose tablets for Audrey and drew a complete blank.  Never seen such a thing. Back at camp, with a roast in the oven we enjoyed another swim, with the warm swimming pool again to ourselves.

See below for speed up dash cam of the return trip from Amiense