The big smoke around here is Limoges. Although I’ve been there often; to the golf courses, to the airport, to the station, I’ve only once had a stroll around and that was just to some fine gardens not far from the station. So I decided to have a day out to see more of the place and to let the train take the strain rather than drive down.

I was a little put out at being asked for €25.40 for the privilege but Michelin assured me later that it would have cost me €18.30 for petrol and I am sure I could easily have spent the balance of €7.10 on city centre parking so I suppose it was a competitive price. My belief that rail travel in France was relatively cheap was shaken though and to reassure myself I investigated the costs of a similar journey in UK.

I chose Berwick-upon-Tweed to Edinburgh as a comparable market town to big smoke expedition of roughly the same length (in fact 10 kilometres longer) and started digging. Now France offers various fare deals but nothing of the complexity of the British system. Eventually I managed to get a fair comparison. I chose trains leaving at approximately the same times and on the same day of the week and under an equivalent fare regime. Lo and behold I was not reassured at all because that journey would have cost only €20.88. So no whining from the rail passengers alliance next time fares go up. They don’t know when they’re well off.

Saxophone players however may well have cause for complaint. Reeds are sold in the UK at French prices.

As for the day in Limoges, it passed very well. The weather was lovely for a start. If it had rained I might have gone to the museums that I had pencilled in but instead I admired them and other buildings from the outside (apart from the cathedral, into and out of quick I went quickly), strolled in the gardens, watched the world go by while sipping coffee in a pavement café and browsed in a shop or two.


The city’s iconic building is its railway station (completed in 1929 from a design done in 1914), seen here across a fountain, but there are others of interest. The round one in the picture is an art gallery that started life as a cold store for Argentinean beef in 1919 and another is a trompe d’oeil. The flag bearers are gathering for a demo in protest against the retirement age being raised from 60 to 62 and the boys in the orange suits are not a chemical warfare unit but gardeners spraying some toxic juice on the grass. The suits and breathing apparatus may help them to get to 62 but what about the punters sitting in the little garden doing some passive inhalation?

One of the shops in which I browsed was practically giving away DVDs so I went home clutching a handful, including Das Boot. I’ve never seen it. To do so I need to find five hours to get through its two discs, but I’m bound to be confined indoors by rain sooner or later.