Well, not ALL here anyway. But you knew that already, didn’t you?
I’m not there either – although I was earlier this evening. This is the Viaduc de la Roche-Taillende, colloquially known as the Viaduc des Rochers Noirs, and it’s near the town of Lapleau in the Corrèze.
You may not think it looking at that tight curve to enter the viaduct, but I’m actually standing on the bed of a disaffected railway line. It’s another one of these metre-gauge tacots, or “rattletraps”, a narrow-gauge railway line similar to the one that we’ve seen at Marcillat-en-Combraille in the Allier, but this one ran between Ussel and Tulle in the Corrèze.
There was a speed limit of 15kph on the line which is hardly surprising given the tightness of the curve, and also the fact that we have a suspension bridge which is quite a rare type of construction for a railway bridge.
Just like chez Liz and Terry, the railway disappears off into a tunnel on the other side of the river, but that is all fenced off.
Until 2006 you could actually drive through there in a car but unfortunately the Conseil Départementale has put a stop to all of that.
I merely contented myself with taking a few pictures – there wasn’t anything more that I could do unfortunately.
I did however go for a little bit of a climb and I was glad that I did, because the view from up on a rocky outcrop towering a couple of hundred feet above the viaduct was stunning, to say the least, even if it did wear me out climbing up to here.
This photo does show you the lengths that they had to go in order to build the viaduct and it’s hard to think that this line didn’t open until 1913, by which time it had effectively already outlived its effectiveness with the coming of the motor-bus but nevertheless it struggled on until as recently as 1960, which is quite an achievement for a metre-gauge tacot.
While I was up here I took a few photos of the stunning scenery.
The viaduct spans the Gorge de la Luzège at a height of 92 metres, or 126 metres if you count the pylons, so I’m quite high up and the view of the gorge is amazing.
It’s a shame that the weather was so dreadful though – it’s been raining non-stop and I’ve forgotten to bring a raincoat with me.
Serves me right.
Coming here brought me (via the Pionsat Post Office to post Cécile’s letters) over the Plateau de Millevaches on the border between the Creuze and Corrèze.
Apart from the snow that I encountered, the plateau is famous in that it was effectively a “Free French” area during World War II. There is a great deal of resistance souvenirs in the area, including this plaque to commemorate the parachuting-in of members of the 3rd Regiment SAS who organised the French Resistance in the turbulent times after D-Day.
There are poignant souvenirs too – memorials to victims of the occasional sweeps by the Gestapo and also the town of Tulle itself just a short drive away, where the Das Reich Panzer Division of the SS strung up almost 100 locals from lamp-posts in the centre of the town as a form of reprisal for terrorist attacks.
And that’s not all either.
I saw a sign that said Ruines les Cars and with Cars being French for the kind of coaches that I drove when I worked for Shearings, I went for a look to see what it was all about, but instead I found myself in the middle of a Roman villa and huge Temple from the 2nd Century AD.
Of course, you are not allowed to say “Roman Remains” here in France. Everything has to be “Gallo-Roman” because the French don’t accept (rightly or wrongly, I dunno) that the French civilisation of the turn of the Common Era was any less inferior than the Roman civilisation, and I’ve seen some healthy fights at some of these archaeological meetings that I sometimes go to.
Talking of ruins of cars, another thing that caught my eye was this. The remains of an old car abandoned in a forest.
No maker’s plate or anything like that on it, so no idea what it might be, but it has a wooden chassis sheathed in steel, and it’s clearly the type of car that had real wings and a lift-off body. With its steel wheels, all of that dates it to the early 1930s I reckon.
If you have any ideas what it might be, let me know. But there isn’t much to go on, I know.
From here I headed off down the hill and towards civilisation. I ended up in the town of Tulle where I planned to find a hotel but was singularly unsuccessful.
And to my own surprise, I didn’t take a single photo of the place and I ought to have done, because Tulle is one of the saddest places in French modern history.
Following the Normandy Landings, the local Resistance troops had risen up and seized control of the town from the Germans. Just as they were preparing to deal with the final German holdouts, the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division Das Reich appeared on the scene on its way north.
The result was that 99 civilians, many of whom had no connection with the armed uprising, were strung up from lamp-posts in the main street and a considerable number of others were brutally tortured
So with no hotel that I could find in Tulle, I’ve moved on to Brive la Gaillard where I’ll be spending the night.. I’ve no idea where I’ll be tomorrow.
Back here, first job that I did even before I took off my coat was to put the third and final coat of varnish onto the shelves in the stairwell up to the attic.
Second job that I did, likewise before taking off my coat, was to fit the crown onto the LED light bulb and recess it into the hole in the false ceiling on the landing.
last night. And so consequently all through the night I was running around at Hogwarts.
, where the original director’s cut ran to well over 5 hours, but nevertheless there was tons of stuff that was irrelevant that could have been left out, just as there was tons of stuff that was relevant that should have been included.