The Leonardo da Vinci Painter and Architect Galleries at Château du Clos Lucé, the latest initiative in the Saint Bris mission to keep the memory of the Master alive and well are an absolute triumph. Very impressive. Awesome in fact. They by far exceed expectations.

Limoges can be explored on foot. The Art Deco station built in the 1920s is grand, as is the Town Hall. Limoges Cathedral has a rare Black Madonna and Child.

For the last hundred and fifty years or so, visitors to this ancient and beautiful church have pondered over a sculpture of ‘the drowned woman’. Now, thanks to Anna Baydova’s awe inspiring, meticulous research they ponder no more.

Did the Château really have lions? Hard to take in, but, yes. You do wonder how they got here and how they were they fed along the way. The danger to life and limb alone beggars belief.

Enshrined in a law passed in 1950, the last Sunday in May is Mother’s Day in France. The French Republic officially pays tribute each year to French mothers during a day devoted to the celebration of Mother's Day.

On 27 May, in 1943, the National Council of the Resistance was set up.

There is an absolutely wonderful exhibition on at le Garage Art Centre (ends 30 June 2021) in Amboise. Absolutely wonderful. A real treat. It stirs the senses, emotions even, on so many levels.

In 1970, almost a hundred years after the sculptor Auguste Rodin was in Amboise, Alexander Calder, an entirely new sort of sculptor arrived, not, like Rodin, to sketch the Château, but to oversee the installation of one of his stabiles.