On our last Normandie day we took a trip to a nearby Abbey. It’s almost directly across from us on the other side of river opposite the next village Bardouville. We couldn’t take our local ferry as it was closed for a ‘security inspection’ so we had to drive 10 minutes further to take another ferry. All the ferries are closed tomorrow for 1 May Labour Day, which is taken very seriously in France. Luckily we don’t need to take the ferry to drive to Paris tomorrow.

The Abbey was begun in 1113 and took 30 years to build. It was during an era when many abbeys were springing up along the river. It was built over a pagan temple and so has been an important site for a long time. It suffered during the 100 years war and the French revolution eventually saw it delisted as an Abbey. The wonderful gardens even became farmland for a while. In the 1990s a big renovation project began to rebuild the gardens and renovate the buildings.

Some carvings had been replaced but a lot were very intricate and expressive.