Hard to take in but there he was, the man himself in the flesh so to speak, at Château Clos Lucé, Amboise Friday 2 February telling a captivated audience how Léo came about.

Ever since William (known as The Conqueror in his home town of Caen, The Bastard in London) brought his language and culture to England, the English have always hot footed it to France.

It turns out that Yolande of Valois, who was born in to her impoverished father’s Court in Tours, was responsible for The Cult of The Turin Shroud.

Not until all that long ago, kings of England declared they had a claim to the French throne.

The engineering genius (no other word will do) Gustave Bönickhausen was born in France December 1832 and died in France December 1923.

While in Paris, we were delighted to bump into an old acquaintance, Jean-Paul Othoniel. Well, not literally, although we did meet him in the Church of Our Lady of Bout-des-Ponts, Amboise when his installation Tour d’Or Blanc was inaugurated on 16 October 2021.

After more than five hundred years, thousands of books and millions of words written about Leonardo da Vinci, there are not many mysteries left surrounding him.

Hidden from the road is a (sadly rusting) Meccano type contraption known as The Éolienne Bollée.