Happy days are here again thought I on Thursday after breaking 100 for the first time in months. This was my reconnaissance round at Le Petit Chêne. Unfortunately when pitted against my fellow seniors the following day I missed a few putts, put balls in the water and generally messed up. Still it’s a beautiful course and I had a lovely time.

I’d set off on Wednesday for a leisurely drive to Poitiers. Now that’s an important place as anyone who’s read a guide book or taken a cursory interest in the Plantagenets, or the Arab non-conquest of Europe will know. It’s also famous for Futurscope, a multi-media theme park that I’ve left for a future visit.

On Wednesday though the poitevins (as langtonian is to Kirkcaldy so poitevin is to Poitiers) were thronging the streets for the first day of the summer sales. All shops start their sale on the same day and finish on the same day. The dates vary a bit according to region, like the school holidays, but there is no margin for individual initiative. Unless that is you choose to go out of business or relocate in which case you are allowed to have your own little sale then.

Now instead of trying to entice customers into their shops the shopkeepers had taken their stock, lock stock and barrel into the street. Every shop had a manned stall of goodies on the pavement. So the already narrow alleyways of the medieval town were extra squeezed. Then there was the actual outdoor market. Commerce rules OK.

Being a medieval town it’s got a crop of historic buildings, some of which I entered, most of which I just gazed at and strolled on till tired feet called for rest. Being a warm sunny continental day I chose a shady café terrace for a rest.

Later I went on to Niort where I spent the night. I thought Niort was lovely. It’s smaller than Poitiers but has lots of the same attributes. There’s a superb looking keep (thanks to Henry II), pleasant riverside walks, a magnificent covered market etc. I wandered uphill through what your guide book would no doubt call a warren of winding alleys to a twin spired church.

One of the things that annoys me about churches is that they often have a magnificent façade with a large imposing door flanked by smaller if no less imposing doors all of which are kept tight shut and you have to squeeze through some tiny side door. Well the Eglise de Saint André has seen the light and it streams through a beautiful stained glass window, floods the body of the kirk and rushes out of the wide open western door to meet the visitor as he crests the hill.

For an atheist I visit a lot of churches and particularly enjoyed recently a first communion mass in the austere black stone cathedral of Clermont Ferrand. I’m indebted to the Rough Guide for the knowledge that the Michelin tyre empire centred there owes it’s genesis to our Mr Macintosh the raincoat man. Apparently a niece of his married a Clermont Ferrand entrepreneur ( a pre Michelin chap) and brought to the marriage, inter alia, some good ideas of what to do with rubber.