Still in France, but only just

News No 2

After leaving our overnight spot on the Loire we travelled on to Oradour-sur Glane, near Limoges. Oradour is the site of an atrocity carried out by the Waffen SS in 1944 – just a few days after D-day. In their effforts to supress the resistance they attacked the village murdering one third of its inhabitants, of whom the majority in the village during the day were of course women, children and the elderly. They then burned out the village, which has been kept as a memorial; a new village was built just a few hundred yards away, but not until 10 years later.

The following morning we were befriended by a cat; it simply walked in as we opened the door, and despite being forcibily removed camped on our step. Eventually we gave in as it had not tried to claw us when we threw it out, so we made abit of a fuss of it. No doubt it it regularly popped down to visit the motorhomers – it certainly looked as if it was used to having double rations! We called him 'Smoky' which he seemed to respond to, no doubt to ingratiate himself for a free meal!

After a second night in Oradour we set off towards Perigueux, visiting a historic old village en-route

This is some of real rural France - a country so large that it has villages which have almost been 'forgotten'. The village garage, which looked as if its former life had been as a quite grand cinema or maybe even a music-hall, had long since finished trading, so we were too late to refuel Sally, even from the newer of the two petrol pumps!

And so to Perigueux. Have a close look at the roofs of the houses. We'd not seen anything like it before.

The next day we went on to Sarlat-la-Caneda in the Dordogne.

We saw several groups of people dressed in tabards following a 'leader' and making notes – our guess is that they will be next summer's guides. There were a few other visitors but it was quite quiet until an invasion of Japanese tourists arrived, so we think it is probably a World Heritage Site, as the Japanese only seem to bother with the best! We went to our 'favourite French restaurant' – we visited it about five years ago and decided it was worth going again for another proper lunch.

We opted for the 5 course menu for the princely sum of 20 euros - it was excellent and certainly precluded any need to eat again for the rest of the day. We may not go there often, but we are pretty sure we'll be there again some day! On our return to Sally it started to rain – the first time in a week other than a few 'spits and spots'. And it rained for hours, which ws OK with us as we just stayed where we were, read a bit and slept off our lunch until next morning, by which time we were fit to drive again!

Then we headed for the Lot, with better weather for most of the day than had been promised. On the way we came across a a medieval village. Here the TI was open, manned by a lovely lady who's almost accent-less English was explained by the fact that she had moved there from The Netherlands some 20 years ago. She explained that at that time the village was in a very bad way, and was not recogonised for what it is. However, things are on the move now, with peple moving in to renovate the houses and set up small businesses and they now have as many as 4 people mannng the TI in the summer just to keep up with demand.

The 'Mushroom House' – with room for the carts to pass either side

This is some original wall before renovation.

It was good to see a place where the houses were being carefully restored and mainntained rather than 'done up'; all credit to 'the Planners'!! And we found something particularly endearing in this old French village

We arrived in Biarritz this afternoon and will visit tomorrow. We are parked along with a multi-national group of about 20 motorhomers with the Aire at about 2/3s capacity – we think you'd be lucky to get in here - 1½ miles from the centre – in the summer. The weather is still holding up at about 16 deg., so very pleasant for getting out and about.