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Oradour-Sur-Glane, France
Sunday, Nov 19, 2006

Massacre

David Murray
2007-03-04 10:16:14

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beside it was the Church of Notre Dame. This to had turrets. Walking around the village was nice. No tourists, well, except us !!! We finished here and off we went again, this time by coincidence, following the Richard the Lion Heart tour. Didn't know he had been here, but it took us through some lovely countryside. At Pompadour, there was another huge chateau that Richard had apparently lived in. We were up for a tour, but we were to late, so we hit the road again and our final stop for the day was in Solignac. Here was a 75 metre long granite church. It was famous because it is used as a stop over on the pilgrim's route to Santiago de Campostello. There is also a 15th century fresco of St Christophe

I was going to drink beer, but considering this is France, and they were wanting to charge 4.80 Euro for 250 ml, I decided to give beer the flick and drink red wine. Much easier solution

In the morning, no hangover, so we headed off in the direction of Saintes. It was a long drive, and considering I only had a couple of hours sleep on Friday, I was still felling pretty messy. Along the way, I nearly fell asleep at the wheel. I decided to give the car to Lucy, which is pretty scary in itself. She has only driven a left hand drive car once, and I wasn't looking forward to it. I tried to sleep, but it didn't work. I was actually shitting myself. Upon arrival, it doesn't matter what side the steering wheel is on, Lucy doesn't cope with driving on the wrong side of the road, so I took over. We were here to find a Roman Amphitheatre.

We found a sign, followed it, and then we were there. We had a look around the outside and found that it was closed. From a distance, it was pretty messy, but kind of like the one in Triar. Grass growing over it, with one big arch. We took the obligatory photos, and went looking for the Roman baths. After much cursing as we drove around the small streets, we found them. Normally, we would do a Tony Robinson from Time Team, and go, "Look, that is where the fires were lit, and there are the steam rooms and baths and stuff", but there was nothing there. We exited, stage left, very quickly. Back into town, we walked around the local produce markets. It is such a downer that the laws are so fucked up now because it would have been good to bring back some cheese !!! Back into the car, we hit a paying expressway as we were now on our way to Poitiers. Once again I died. Nearly falling asleep at the wheel at 150 Kph is not the smartest thing to do, and as we were on an expressway, I handed the car back to Lucy,
under the proviso, as soon as we went through the pay booths, she would pull over and hand the car back to me. 66 K's passed by very quickly especially when you are going 150 Kph !!! She paid, and I drove into Poitiers. Parking the car up, we walked up to the Church of Notre Dame. Inside are some frescoes from the 15th century. They are pretty good condition. It was pretty nice. Outside, the front of the church was some pretty amazing carvings. It was also the hangout of all the local ferals. Kind of took a little bit of it away. We walked down to the Cathedral of St Pierre. It was huge !!! Very impressive carvings outside and inside was some pretty good stain glass windows dating back to the 12th century. They say that these are the oldest in France. Across the road was an old church dating back to Roman times. It had some ok frescoes inside as well. The day was winding up, and we made our way back to the car, as we had to catch a flight back to London

Summary

It had been good to finally make it to Oradour-Sur-Glane. Pretty heavy, but I am glad I have been. The rest of the time flew by, I think before I do another one of these in two weeks, I really need to sleep leading up to the flight !!! Note to self. Get more sleep