The bus, a big 52 seater, was all but empty and got to La Souterraine without picking up a single further passenger. Why not run something smaller? At 2€ it was good value. The train to Limoges was prompt and quick and I was there by 10am.

 My hotel is just by the glorious Belle Epoque station. And, like lots of places these days, has no human there to greet you. You get a text with access codes and that is that. Once I had found it (no signage nor indication of what lay behind the door onto the street) I was able to find my room and leave my rucksack before heading out. By now it was raining, and looked like it was settling in. I visited St Stephen’s Cathedral, which has an odd and very ugly belltower, and which felt musty and unloved inside. Shockingly, for the mother church of a diocese, there are no daily services.

The Fine Art museum next door was shut on Wednesdays, so I headed for the Central Market and the ancient buildings around that part of the city.

It was still raining hard, and I decided to head back to the hotel to dry out, and on the way I stumbled across the church with the spire in the photo above. It was warm and welcoming, well lit, and a lunchtime mass was going on with a congregation of about thirty, children and families, students and all ages of adults. I stayed and enjoyed it it very much. The church was S Michel des Lions.

After a siesta I went out for the evening. The rain had gone and there was even some sun. After a light supper, I headed to the cinema to watch Martin Scorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which was very absorbing. 

City life is strikingly less friendly than country living. The anonymous hotel, the people who pass by silently in the streets, the groups who only speak to themselves. It isn’t unusual, in fact, it is exactly what we are used to. But living in a small town where people do speak to each other and after a week of encountering so many open-hearted strangers, it is a bit of a shock.