A change comes over the country south of Poitiers, for hedges begin to appear, and the trees are less closely trimmed. The curious sight of oxen drawing a plough with a donkey leading is sometimes to be seen.
Couhé-Vérac is a large roadside village with an uninteresting church, and no picturesqueness in its long street except the seventeenth-century market-hall, with an open wooden roof, supported by a row of stone pillars.
The road goes southwards in a straight line to Chaunay, where it bends, but on leaving the village at once resumes its straightness. The twelfth-century church at Chaunay has fine sculpture.
It is interesting to watch the way in which the houses assume a different character as one goes southwards. The roofs become very flat, and one begins to notice vines trained above doors and windows in a thoroughly Italian fashion.
The country is undulating and without distant prospects, plantations and the scattered fruit-trees closing up the views.
On passing from the department of Vienne into Charente, the direction-boards change from blue to green.
RUFFEC
is a town on a tributary of the Charente, with little charm in the street which runs straight through it; but by turning to the left along the Rue de Valence, one finds in the Rue des Petits Bancs a church with a Romanesque west front of a most ornate character. The three members of the arch of the doorway are richly sculptured; in the beautiful arcade above there remain seven statues in the twelve niches. They are time-worn and battered, and most of them have lost their heads; but they and the figure above of Christ in a vesica, with worshipping angels on either side, still show the skill of the early sculptor.
Ruffec retains some specimens of its overhanging timber-framed houses, one of them dated 1582, and the town is famed for its patties made of truffles and partridges.
Keeping a southward course, the straight stretches of road bring one to a descent to the Charente, where there is a fine view beyond the river, with the village of Mansle down below on the southern bank. On crossing the river there is a pretty view of white walls with bright green shutters, low-pitched brown roofs, and a twelfth-century church raised above the road, with large empty niches by the western door.