St Germain Les Belles

 In the 16^th century King Henry IV of France stayed in the village of St Germain and was welcomed by so many handsome female wellwishers that he ordered the village be renamed St-Germain-Les-Belles-Filles. Somehow the “Filles” (ladies) bit has dropped off, so it’s now just “St Germain the Beautiful”. We certainly got a beautiful pitch in the campsite right by the lake.

The village itself looks solid. The old lock-up looks like it could safely house the Kray twins.

The church is a fortified church, so much the same style, no doubt served by a well fortified priest.

But there are some pretty buildings like the bakery/newsagents.

Grocery shopping needs the supermarkets of the nearest town, Uzerche, but we have a look around first. The old town is built on a rocky pinnacle in a loop of the river. The way up is impressive.

After coffee and a croissant, we entered the old town through the fairy-tale gatehouse.

At the centre is another massive church, oddly next to a modern, very ordinary house

More old buildings as we strolled through the streets. This is the 14^th century tower of the Black Prince. The plaque didn’t say if it was built by our Black Prince, the son of Edward III, as the date is right and he did lead armies to conquer parts of France including this area. But maybe you’d just play down a defeat.

We saw lots more of these fairy-tale roofs and buildings, e.g.as in the next two photos.

Now we’re back down to river level, so here’s the river, the Vezere, that almost encircles the old town.

We looked over to the opposite bank and saw that the old houses there, although not so ancient, were of fairy-tale quality. One asks oneself - how many overhangs could they build upwards before it all comes crashing down into the river?

These old places have a timeless harmony that we struggle to achieve with modern towns, but future generations will surely be drooling over our windfarms, electricity pylons and new towns that we find so depressing. So hang on in there Corby and Stevenage!