St. Pourçain sur Sioule, France - visited July 9, 2012

Still in the Auvergne region, we headed north and shortly descended from the Massif Central, skirted Clermont Ferrand and eventually came to St. Pourçain sur Sioule.
In the Allier department of the Auvergne region, St. Pourçain sur Sioule sits along the river Sioule and is home to around 5,000 inhabitants. The city lies at the crossroads of the north-south Clermont-Ferrand to Paris road and the east-west Lyon to Limoges highway.
It is probable that a swineherd called Porcianus or Purcianus, sometime in the 5th century CE, was elevated to abbot of a monastery that was built on the hill overlooking the river Sioule. In the 14th century the village was fortified into a walled city. Around this time the it was known as St. Pourçain Arbors from the grapevines grown on trellises or arbors. Following the Revolution it was renamed Mont-sur-Sioule but after the revolutionary fervor died down it became known as St. Pourçain sur Sioule early in the 19th century.
The municipal campground, contained in a park on an island in the Sioule, is very comfortable and enjoys a lot of family friendly activities. See here for more pictures of this city.

Saint Flour, France - visited July 6, 2012

Nestled between two volcanic mountain regions in the Massif Central of the Haute Auvergne region, Saint Flour offers an insight into rural medieval France amid the grandeur of a volcanic landscape. The medieval town of 6,500 or so is on the top of the Auvergne's highest volcanic outcrops and is in the Cantal department in the Auvergne region in south-central France. The upper city is located on a volcanic dike, the lower city extends to the banks of the river Ander. There are a number of megalithic graves in the area known as dolmens that probably originated in the bronze age and there is ample evidence to confirm Roman occupation.
During the French Revolution Saint Flour took several successive names. De-Christianized first as Fort-Cantal then Fort-Libre then Mont-Flour before readopting its original name in 1793. The territory of the commune was never changed. Briefly, between 1790 and 1795 it served as the préfecture of the newly-created département, before Aurillac succeeded to that position. The population at the time was around 5,300, about 1200 less than today.
Proclaimed as religious capital of Haute-Auvergne in 1317, Saint-Flour didn't have its own cathedral until the following century. Built in the 15th century, on the ruins of the priory founded by Saint Odilo of Cluny, Abbot of Cluny, in the 11th century, the cathedral offers an foreboding exterior facade and a black Christ inside. More pictures here.

Hérisson, France - June 12, 2011

 Hérisson is a delightful town located in the Allier department of the Auvergne region in central France. The river Aumance, a tributary of the Cher, flows through the town and eventually the Cher joins the River Loire and so to the Atlantic ocean.
Dominating Hérisson are the castle ruins, visible from almost everywhere in town. Built by the Dukes of Bourbon in the 14th century to oversee river traffic, the castle was first taken by Louis XI in the 15th century, changed hands again in the 17th century before finally being dismantled by Cardinal Mazarin and converted to  a stone quarry.
At the time of our visit the castle was beginning to be restored but was still open to the public free of charge. Worth the climb to inspect the architectural detail and get some different views across town. Refurbishment is expected to be complete in about two years.

The literal translation of Hérisson is hedgehog which accounts for the city crest shown here. The low key gift shop in town has all manner of hedgehog centric souvenirs including some fine ceramic pieces.
Check out these other pictures.

June 17, 2009 - Vichy, France, a town with a past

On September 3rd, 1939, France declared war on Germany the day after the German invasion of Poland. That done, France then appears to have dusted off its hands in a smug sort of "That'll fix their wagon" way and continued with life as usual, feeling confidently unassailable behind their vaunted Maginot Line. Eight months later however, the Germans attacked, crushed the northern end of the the Maginot Line in Belgium and, within a month, overran France. The Germans chased the quickly diminishing remnants of the French government further and further south until the WWI hero, Marshall Philippe Pétain, who was vice-premier at the time, convinced his colleagues to capitulate. After a quick armistice with the Germans, Pétain went on to negotiate a collaborative puppet government with himself as leader. Another triumph of French ingenuity!
The upshot of this was the de-facto dissolution of the Third Republic of France with the country being renamed simply the French State (of Germany, that is). At the same time, the cherished national mantra, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood), adopted after the Revolution, was replaced with the drab, German approved phrase, Travail, Famille, Patrie (Work, Family, Fatherland).
The Vichy government thus created, was to preside over the 40% of France that was now German territory but was not occupied, and also provide administrative services for the occupied area, only to the extent that there was no conflict with German law. The runaway government had already fled as far as Bordeaux, in the unoccupied (and strategically unimportant) southern 40% of the country, and Vichy was selected as the new seat of authority. Being the second largest city in the Auvergne region and having a large telephone exchange were doubtless factors in this choice.For more than four years, Pétain and the Vichy regime, willfully and quite thoroughly collaborated with the German occupation, including support for eclectic "ethnic cleansing" and the vigorous persecution of the French Resistance. The latter was an overt, if low level, civil war that had festered in one form or another since the Revolution 160 years earlier.As events unfolded, a couple of years into the regime, when the allies began to threaten southern Europe through their invasion of north Africa, Germany brought the rest of France under occupation. Meanwhile, General Charles de Gaulle, universally despised and mistrusted by all the senior Allied leaders, worked first from London and later from North Africa, claiming to represent the legitimate continuance of the real French government in exile. Following the Allies' invasion of France in June, 1944, de Gaulle proclaimed the Provisional Government of the French Republic and installed it in Paris after its liberation, in August of the same year.
The Third Republic was thereby briefly resurrected. Simultaneously, Vichy's officials moved to Sigmaringen in Germany to establish their own government in exile which existed until April 1945. Many of the Vichy regime's prominent figures were subsequently tried in France and a number were executed. In all, the Vichy government endured from July 1940 until October 1944.
Today, to a casual observer, the nature, purpose and future of Vichy appear quite clouded. Without a doubt, the city continues to be sadly and unfairly stigmatized by the nature of its role in WWII and, with little industry in the area, appears to be struggling to revive its Hydrotherapy, curative waters mystique that had served it well since the time of the Romans. Changing public mores, burgeoning regulations, improved access to critical information and a grab bag of quack remedies in every corner pharmacy seem likely to push this dream out of reach. More views of this tainted town here.

June 15, 2009 - Le Puy en Velay, a church on a stick

From Salers, our route headed east into the Parc Naturel Régional des Volcans d’Auvergne, a near one million acre park established in 1977. At its highest point, the park is a little over 6000 feet and claims to offer glaciers(?), lakes, peatlands and, obviously, volcanoes in its interior. The roads across the area are desolate, narrow, and often steep and winding - steep enough that in one area we were constrained to first gear for a three mile stretch. The terrain that we passed through ranged from green sloping areas, pockmarked with rocky craters, to lunar looking regions with spires of volcanic rock jutting hundreds of feet in the air. These needles, we learned, are called puys. Our destination was Le Puy-en-Velay, a city of around 21,000 folk, east of the park in the Haute-Loire department of the Auvergne region. There is a huge puy in the center of town called Mons Anicius on which the Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy is built. Sundry mumbo-jumboists espouse fanciful fairy tales of the early Christianization of the site but, what does appear to be true, is that the striking church was first built in the early 12th century. Right outside of the campground was another astonishing sight - the Chapel Saint-Michel d'Aiguilhe (at left) poised atop a rocky needle of volcanic lava - all that remains of a long extinct volcanoes following eons of erosion. The chapel was built in 962 CE by Bishop Godescalc and a deacon named Trianus and is reached by climbing 268 steps carved in a spiral around the rock. The top of the rocky tower is 270 feet above the surrounding countryside with the chapel itself adding to that. Le Puy had become a pilgrim destination as early as 500 CE and boasts a lengthy list of celebrated pilgrims over the the last 1500 years. It also developed into a major start point for the 1000 mile walk to Santiago de Compostela, a tradition that continues, supported by a daily blessing in the cathedral each morning to launch the day's participants on their way. The cathedral has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998. More pictures of this unusual city here.