Friday 4th July. The Wild West comes to Vichy

We arrived in Vichy around 1200 after getting stuck in a stupid traffic jam caused by some road workers who were totally oblivious to the chaos around them which they had caused.

We found the Tourist Office from where the Petit train left and discovered we had missed the last morning circuit by half an hour and the next one would be at 2pm.

So we headed slowly off to our usual sandwich bar in the middle of town and were queuing to place an order when there was this rather loud bang. At first we thought it was a car or motorcycle backfiring and then someone shouted ‘On the Left’ (in French of course) and it was then that Jennifer, who was not in the queue, saw a man holding a sawn off shotgun and then he fired again. We ran in to the shop and in the meantime somebody opened the Police Gates and they arrived on en-masse. We think there were already under cover cops in the road already as they blocked off the road for about half an hour. It was strange they blocked off the road for vehicles but allowed pedestrians to continue?

Quite exiting but at the same time worrying.

A window in a bank had been shattered and so we guessed it may have been a bank robbery attempt which had gone wrong from the perpetrator.

So we finished our lunch and then found that the Tourist Office was now closed due an emergency and no train. This was a shame as we were both looking forward to it.

So we moved across town to the local Carrefour for a small amount of shopping and then headed out of town. During our drive through the outskirts of Vichy there was still a high police presence and several roads were blocked off with a few people hanging around waiting for something to happen.

We stopped on the outskirts of town and put about 60 litres of what must be gold plated diesel in the tank (comments based on current fuel pricing) and headed home.

Jennifer converted the left over steak in to a casserole which she cooked for about two hours and when we tasted it, it was still very tough and so it was removed from the premises forthwith. Instead we opened one of Costco lamb shanks, these are specially packed and last for months without being chilled or frozen, and so converted our beef casserole in to a lamb shank casserole.

A Dutch couple had pitched their tent almost next door and you could tell they were anxious to see inside our awning and caravan and so we invited them over for a drink and a small tour which they enjoyed. It would appear that he is an artist by trade and spends most of his time on stone sculptures. They have been coming to this camp site for the past 20 years firstly with their two young girls but now by themselves. They had a tiny tent which neither Jennifer or I could ever see us using.

A nice evening and we must start packing up things tomorrow in readiness for the big move to Larnagol in the Lot Valley, about 40 minutes from Cahor.

UPDATE. When writing this Blog on Saturday morning we learnt from the camp site owners that the local paper says there were two dead in the gunfire yesterday. It would appear that an escaped prisoner shot dead a 46 year waitress not far from where we had our lunch and then was chased by police to a house where barricaded himself in and was subsequently shot dead by the police. No other details of the case are known for the moment.