Update

We’ve been a bit busy (what's new?) but here's a general update for the last few weeks.

We had a visit from Jennie and Ian in April, and had a great celebration dinner for his birthday at the Hotel de Bordeaux in Pons - very good indeed.

Our first student of the year came to stay with us for a week. Victor was a really pleasant young man and his English came on really well while he was with us.

Audrey and George, our friends with a house in the Dordogne, moved in and we went over to help them.   Welcome to France, both of you. They came over to visit us a few weeks later, which was very nice as it was warm enough to use the pool. We had a dinner with them and our friends Penny and Adrian:

We bought and installed a new range cooker in the kitchen of the main house, and finished the apartment ready to take visitors. Here is the apartment kitchen ready for use, transformed since we took it on.

The house electricity system has a new GTL (consumer unit) which meets the latest standards, and Rhys now has some more work to do to install or modify circuits around the house to match, but at least its all safe now.

The village Maire came round for a meeting about our electricity supply from the public feed - we need it renewing in a new situation but the process is a bit complicated and we don't know what costs will be involved yet.

Jennie and Dorothy have been over to stay for a few days, as have Samantha, Mike and Elizabeth, who flew home yesterday.

And this week we have another student, Hélène, who is delightful, staying with us and working on her English.

Oradour-sur-Glane

On the way back from Limoges Airport we called in at Oradour as we had received several recommendations to go and visit the village. The village was destroyed by a Waffen-SS unit of the German army on 10th June 1944, a few days after the D-day landings. All the inhabitants - 642 people including 452 women and children - were massacred.  The men were shot just to injure them and prevent escape, in small groups around the village. The women and children were put in the church. Both men and women were burned alive and the village was partially razed. It remains today much as it was at the time immediately afterwards.

When General de Gaulle visited the village after the war he decreed that the village was to be preserved as it was as a memorial so that future generations should not forget. A new village was built next to the site of the old one.

 

When we noticed how close to our route Oradour was we took the opportunity to visit. It made a sombre and saddening occasion, but was extremely interesting and somewhat spooky. We bought a book in the new village's tourist office to better understand what happened there, and were glad we went, despite how uncomfortable it was.

On a happier note, after our visit we went to a bar in the new Oradour and met a very interesting couple, Terry and Jan, and spent a very pleasant hour while waiting for a restaurant to open for dinner. Terry (Terry Ray Martyn, a country and western singer) gave us his card and we looked him up on YouTube, and I haven't been able to get his rendition of Dance the Night Away out of my head ever since!