France- Pau to Villaines Les Rochers

Our first night back in France was spent in Pau, a pleasant town with a lovely chateau and Cathedral.  We also went into the boulanger (bakery) for a baguette- yum, I love being back in France.

The Chateau

The Cathedral

We then got on the road to our next destination, Albi which was about 5 hours away.  We managed to do some much needed washing at a laundrette booth located in the Supermarche supermarket car park.  We pulled into the aire at Albi about dinner time.  It was raining hard, so we left the sightseeing for the morning.

The laundrette in the car park

When it was still raining and the photos look as though it's getting dark, when it is about 9am in the morning! Albi is a stunning town, what a find (thanks to Dale).  It has a UNESCO Cathedral, which is gorgeous inside with painted walls, very memorable.  We took a walk along the river Tarn and to the Berbie Palace, both very picturesque.  Unfortunately with the rain the previous night, we had a bit of leaking in the van from the bottom of the gear stick.  It hadn't leaked there before so we had a bit of wet carpet, which meant as much soaking up with old towels as we could manage and the heater on full!

The Berbie Palace

Inside the Cathedral

It continued to rain most of the day and we had a rather quick explore of a small hill top town called Najac, which didn't get the best from us as we were pissed about the rain and wind and the inadequate job the umbrellas were doing.

We got to Rocamadour, a pilgrimage town set into the hill late afternoon and after waiting out the rain for about 30 minutes, managed to sight see there before dinner.  We really liked Rocamadour and stayed in the aire there before setting off the next morning.

The next day we headed to the Grottes de font de Gaume.  It is a cave in which over 200 cave paintings were discovered from 15,000BC.  Unfortunately the next tour wasn't starting for another two hours and the language it would be in was based on who was in the group, so we couldn't be guaranteed English.  We passed on that and continued driving another 2.5 hours to Oradour sur Glane, and parked in the aire for the night there.

On the 10th of July 1944, 200 German SS soldiers surrounded the small town and murdered the 642 people who were present there at the time.

 The next passage is a quote from our guide map we bought at the site:

"At 2pm the SS arrived and after surrounding the village they ordered the inhabitants to go to the Fairground (area in the middle of town).  Machine guns were installed at a place of assembly to which women and men from the neighbouring villages were also directed.  The schoolchildren arrived in lines, accompanied by their teachers.  Soldiers separated the men from the women and children.  The latter were directed toward the church.  A few moments later, the men were divided into groups and dispatched to different places for execution.  At 4pm an explosion was heard.  At this signal the machine guns spat death.  The killers finished off some with a bullet before setting fire to the pile of broken bodies.  About 5pm the SS set down a box from which cords protruded inside the church.  When these were set fire to, causing suffocating smoke, real panic gripped the women who all rushed toward the doors.  The SS were waiting for them there.  Machine gun fire forced them to go back inside.  The church was then set alight.  From this carnage, only one woman survived.  The youngest of the children who perished was only 8 days old".

Memorial

The Post Office

After this the village was set on fire.  The village is now preserved as it was on that day in 1944 as a reminder of what happened here, nearly 70 years ago.  For us, it is also a reminder of other French villages that were destroyed during the war and of other similar SS round ups that we have learnt about in Estonia, Latvia and Belarus to name a few.  There is a pay museum on site and it's from there that you can walk into the town for free.

The tram line

Flowers grow outside the Infants school on the right

We made a day of town hopping before reaching the Loire valley region.  First was Saint Savin and it's Abbey which in inscribed on the UNESCO list.  The church itself is actually free and the museum costs 6 euro, but is all in French.  So we had a good look in the church which is known for it's fresco paintings.

Visiting the information centre at Saint Savin proved useful as we were suggested 2 more towns to visit on our way to the aire at Villaines-les-Rochers.  The first was Angles-sur-l'Anglin, which was not far from Saint Savin and part of the beautiful villages scheme.  It was lovely- ruined chateau and church atop the hill, with a water mill and bridge below.

Then we went to La Roche-Posay, which has a nice medieval quarter and is famous for it's themal springs.

That night we stayed in Villaines-Les-Rochers, the willlow weaving capital of France, with one third of France's production originating from this town alone.