Last year we couldn’t travel more than a few miles it seemed before coming across one of the ‘Plus beaux villages de France’. The Haute Vienne region boasts only one village that has obtained this accolade and it’s not very far from our base so worth a visit on a day out. Mortemart is very low key compared to some of the full-on ridiculously pretty villages we’ve seen previously, but it is charming nonetheless. It is centred around the rebuilt Château of the Duc de Mortemarte which looks out onto the 17th century covered market place. Close by is the church with onion bell tower and beautifully carved 15th century wooden stalls and 3 former convents, one of which now houses the Mairie. Nothing else apart from one café and restaurant but everything beautifully maintained.
Our route took us on through the Monts de Blond area, Blond being another village in the area. The ‘mountains’ are fairly modest but feature stone dolmens and menhirs dating back to prehistoric times.
One of our main destinations for this shortish trip out was Oradour-sur-Glane and the ‘village of Martyrs’. The history of this village is well known to those familiar with WWII history and has links to our recent stay in Normandy. On 10th June 1944 the German troops were making their way North to Normandy and were frustrated by attacks on by the French Resistance. In retaliation they rounded up all of the villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane and killed 642 men, women and children. The Germans subsequently burned and destroyed the entire village. The village was left in ruins as a memorial to those who died and in there 1950s the was surrounded by a wall to protect the site. A new village has sprung up adjacent to the site. Joe has visited a couple of times and has seen changes including the creation of a visitor d’entre entrance.
The day we happened to visit was the day the French introduced a new requirement to show a ‘passe sanitaire’ or health pass (plus passport or proof of identity) at all museums, concerts, large venues with more than 50 people. From the beginning of August it will also be required to show health passes at cafés and restaurants. This has lead on the one hand to a huge increase in the number of people registering to get vaccinated and on the other to demonstrations about restriction of civil liberties.
The site at Oradour counts as a museum so the ‘passé sanitaire’ was required. Not having expected to be visiting a ‘museum’ we didn’t have paper copies of our vaccination certificates with us but did have the NHS app certificate and other digital versions. However, challenges with the phone signal (generally weak in this region we’ve found) and the NHS app being down proved too much of a challenge so we didn’t get into the main site but were able to see some of the ruins as we walked outside the wall. We have still to see if the UK (outside EU) QR code can be read by French scanners but apparently the NHS app certificate or NHS letter (which we also have) should be valid for tourists. We’ve learnt that you can’t rely on a phone signal so have everything saved as photos that can be accessed without one.