This blogging is all very well, but if you get behind with your scribbling its a devil to catch up!  Anyway, having left the Loire Valley we headed south down to Confolens, which sits on the River Vienne to the north west of Limoges.  Its an attractive town which our 15 year-old Rough Guide (not nearly as bad as our 10 year-old satnav) described as ‘rather touristy’ – well the tourists must have come and gone as we saw little sign of them.  In fact we rather liked the town and especially the campsite which was literally on the banks of the Vienne which flowed sedately past our doorstep.  A short (well reasonably short) cycle ride took us up the road to St Germain de Confolens which we particularly enjoyed.
The next stop on our own personal ‘tour de France’ was Bugeat to the southeast of Limoges, but on the way we spent a few hours at Oradour sur Glane.  It was here in June 1944 that a Division of the German Waffen SS, which included a number of Frenchmen, committed a particularly terrible atrocity, destroying the village and brutally murdering some 650 men, women and children in a so-called reprisal for attacks by the French Resistance.  After the war the local population decided not to rebuild the village which has been left as a memorial to those who died here and elsewhere in France.  We had a lovely warm day for our visit but one couldn’t help but be affected by the atmosphere of the place and the thought of what took place 73 years ago.