Taking the Water

An entry to Sepia Saturday. "Using old images as prompts on new reflections"

This week's prompt picture is from County Clare taken c1900 of people taking the waters at Twin Well.  I wonder if the seated local got damp in her bones or did that magical water protect her. What can I take from the photo, well  

I've got a bowler hat and water.  My mother was trying to identify some of her old photos and to that purpose we took a trip to her cousin Alice at Ayside, who being nine years older than her she thought would know much more. She was disappointed that she only knew a little extra, but did come up with who was on this photo when she quickly said "oh that is Bob the gamekeeper".  I wish I'd quizzed her more but the day was full of chatter and as it turned out the two cousins were not to see each other again in this world.  It is quite a bucolic scene, I can almost here the babble of the brook and I'm sure that out of focus dog is just about to retrieve something.  Which is Bob?

The card was sent to my Great Aunt Harriet from one of her sisters on 10th August 1906 saying "just another one for your book".  Wish I had that book from the turn of the 20th century.  But instead here

is a card I picked up in a local charity shop with a woman, not taking the water, but gazing out over Lake Bourget to Mont Blanc in the distance while balanced a small child above a sheer drop.  The previous owner of the card has put a green cross on a building, perhaps a hotel, and on the reverse in the same green ink has written 'keep'. This must have been a special memory although the use of green ink is a bit of a worry.  The town stretching out in front of the mother and child is Aix Les Bains, a spa town since Roman times at the southern end of the Jura Mountains.  The town was a fashionable mountain resort in the 1920s

from which period this Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942) French travel poster encouraged people to visit.  She looks full of joy so the mineral waters must have the healing power or there is just a good night life. The British called Aix Les Bains 'Aches and Pains' and the millions of gallons of water that pour from its warm sulphur springs every day at 115 degrees (46 degrees Centigrade) are reputed to wash away any twinges.   For more serious cases there are two altitude clinics up on the mountain to retreat to once the bathing and drinking treatment are complete.

  If your preference is not to take the waters but to take to the water this looks the ideal way to cross the largest natural lake in France c1900, oh and there is a woman and child with a hats too.