As the weather was planned to be better today we had previously decided to take a day trip put and visit the ancient town of Riom.
The journey there was on all the back roads and very enjoyable and passing through many small villages and towns. There is so much farming being carried out in this country with miles and miles of fields growing stuff. The town of Riom dates back several centuries and is built on the top of a hill and it must have been a walled city at some time in the past. The houses and public buildings and churches are all built from the local volcanic rock which is of a dark grey colour and frankly rather boring compared to other areas of France. There was also some graffiti which did not look to nice and one got the feeling that this town is a bit run down and the richer locals lived up in the hills overlooking the place.
Nearby is the small town of Volvic, the home of Volvic natural spring water which is collected from the mountain stream then bottled and sold everywhere. This water is cleansed by oozing through the rocks and crannies of the hilly type mini mountains before arriving at the bottle ling plant and then sold on. We had our picnic overlooking the scenery but did not take photos as it was still a bit mist from yesterday's rain.
We left Riom and headed back to Carrefour in Gannat to purchase the evenings vitals and arrived back at the site at about 4.30 pm. The internet connections were still down and so the plan was if it was still down at 6pm a strong protest would be lodged. Just as Noel got up the 'games room' to test the connections the PC engineer had arrived from Lyon to try and fix the problems. We then had out dinner and about half way through the engineer turned up on his bike to say the connections should be working and could I come and check it with him. We offered him a glass of wine and chatted awhile about his relationship with John the camp site owner etc and then went and checked and thankfull it was up and running again.
E
mails came flooding in which will be answered tomorrow and Noel spent most of his time helping other guests on site get connected. They had a PC but no idea how to pick up a wifi signal and enter the security network key.
