Oradour sur Glane

We decided to have a few days away, so on Wednesday morning we packed up the campervan and headed up to the Haute - Vienne, about 80 miles north of here.

We visited a village called Oradour sur Glane, just west of Limoges.

 On 10th June 1944, a group of German soldiers entered the village, and for no apparent reason they ordered all the women and children to go into the church, and all the men to assemble in some barns in the village. At 4pm a massive bomb went off in the church, killing everyone inside, and at the same time all the men were machine gunned to death in the barns.
In case anyone had managed to survive either of these atrocities, the German soldiers then set fire to the entire village.
Only one woman and 5 men managed to escape, all had to pretend to be dead. The next day the Germans, laden with booty stolen from the houses, left and made their way northwards towards Normandy.

  Burnt out cars remain untouched.

Main street with tram way. 

 Church were all the women & children died.

The village has been left as a memorial to the 642 men, women and children who died that day.

From there we found les Lacs de la Haute Charente, and stayed overnight on the edge of Lac Lavande in the campervan. An English couple own a bar there on the shores of the lake. We had a delicious fish and chip supper, washed down with a bottle of wine there and they let us stay overnight for free.

The campervan was then taken to a nearby campsite where it will remain in storage for the next couple of months while we get on with the next part of our trip to Kefalonia.