No orienteering this Sunday and all my friends are doing something else, so we decided to go out for a little drive. Where we went was prompted by a book I bought the other day about village churches. As I was reading it Roy said, why don't we visit one of them, but I said that they were all a long way away. Until I got to the very last one (they were in alphabetical order) which was only about an hour away. So today we went to see it. It was built in the early years of the 13th century. It was a monastery church, later a village church, damaged by all kinds of invaders from Tartars to Turks. Burnt down more than once, finally abandoned and then further damaged by earthquake. For a couple of centuries its stone was robbed and used for building houses in the neighbouring villages until it was saved from complete ruin by a benedictine monk/teacher, who saw its beauty and suggested that what is left is restored and safeguarded for future generations. It was even damaged in the Second World War by cannon and small arms fire.
There is very little left of the monastery buildings, but the church itself, even in its ruinous state is majestic. It was lovely, peaceful and very photogenic. We drove back a different way across the hills and enjoyed every minute of it.
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