Headed off south today and visited the town of Poitiers where I stopped for lunch. The old town is perched high on a hill and is a little tricky to get around, but eventually made it the the spectacular Hotel de Ville (City Hall). Also, amusingly, there is a replica Statue of Liberty (1903) installed in Liberty Square (where they use to carry out executions with the guillotine!) Driving through fields of canola, came to a little village called Liguge which supposedly has the oldest Abbey in Europe (dating from 370AD). Late this afternoon stopped at the Oradour -Sur-Glane 10th June 1944 (about 20km from my overnight stop of Limoges). There is a massive monument there to the day when 200 Waffen SS Soldiers of the Reich wiped out a whole village of innocent people. Over 642 people were killed including 193 children. They then proceeded to destroy most of the buildings. Today you wander around the town that has been left untouched for 79 years. There is still a lot of conjecture why the SS did the massacre. One rumour is that it had to do with a load of stolen gold that the French resistance stole from the Nazi's. The whole place was very eerie and moving and well worth visiting.
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