The sun began to shine today. It’s appearance didn’t influence our destinations though. We’d decided to go to Severac le Chateau yesterday evening and that a real effort to look round Liaucous should be made, as we’d postponed going a couple of times.

Severac lies to the west of our hotel here, about a 40 minute drive. We’d looked round this picturesque medieval town three years ago and didn’t really expect any major changes, after all Medieval buildings can’t change substantially can they? Well, maybe they can as we found out. We walked in through one of the old city gates and strolled round to the Maison De Jeanne, which is 14th century and reputed to be the oldest house in France. Oh dear, whatever are they doing to it? It’s been replastered  externally and very inappropriate UVPC windows installed. It’s hideous and unsympathetically restored.

We carried on up towards the chateau but, as it was three years ago the final climb to the top defeated us. We descended, grabbed a quick coffee and made our way to Liaucous, which is practically on our hotel’s doorstep.

Taking a very narrow and thankfully short road just before the turn for our B&B,  we parked at the rear of the village. It is very pretty, perhaps enhanced by a brilliantly sunny afternoon, which has been somewhat of a rarity this trip. Getting up to the church was a challenging climb up very old, steep, stone embedded paths. The view at the top was stunning. The village wasn’t deserted as others have been this week, we saw at least two living people. Luckily they didn’t try to run us through with pitchforks either so we survived the walk back down to the car and made our way back to the hotel.

Tonight we invited our new American/Belgian friends, David and Marianne to have dinner with us at the Grange Templier. The restaurant is in a magnificent setting, with vaulted ceilings in a large hall. Sadly I wasn’t very impressed with the food. Although it was very good, I felt it lagged behind some of the other places we’ve visited this week.

We didn’t get back here until after 11pm so I’m writing a ‘midnight oil’ blog. Our plans for tomorrow aren’t definite, though we may end up riding a small white train round a circle of rocks……yes, really.