Kiwi on the Road - Our Motorhome Adventures: The Loire and Dordogne 2026 - A horrific and harrowing visit to the Village Martyr of Oradour-sur-Glane

Wednesday 7th October - Brantome, Nouvelle-Aquitaine

It rained most of the night, but that wasn't the problem, it was the wet branches of the tree we were parked under sweeping the van roof. It was very annoying! It was dry when we woke up which was a nice surprise as we were expecting rain for the 24 hours.

We made the short journey to Brantome and found our aire for the night. It is right by the River Dronne with lovely pitches, though perhaps in the high season vans may be more jammed in. Each pitch has electricity too. Cost? £9.39 for 24 hours!

We settled in for a day off because of the rain, but as none was forthcoming, we went to explore the town.

Brantôme (officially Brantôme en Périgord) is famous for its island setting encircled by a bend of the River Dronne, earning it the nickname "the Venice of the Périgord."

Next to the site is a park alongside the river which Rio really enjoyed, as he was able to have some off lead time. He has walked for miles on the lead while we have been away, but it's not the same as being able to mooch and have zoomies of course!

We crossed over the river using the Pont Coudé (Elbow Bridge), a distinctive 16th-century, L-shaped Renaissance stone bridge. There is a lovely building on an island in the river. Le Moulin de l'Abbaye (The Abbey Mill) was originally constructed by the Benedictine monks of the abbey to grind grain for the monastic community and local villagers. It is now a luxury hotel and fine-dining restaurant with a terrace overlooking the river weir.

In the cliff we saw some large caves and discovered that one contained bath like structures. It turns out that long before modern aquaculture, Benedictine monks utilized the constant temperature and clean water flowing through the troglodyte caves behind the abbey for fish production.

The Abbaye de Brantôme stands alongside the river. It was founded by Charlemagne in 769 AD and is one of the oldest and most architecturally distinct monastic sites in Aquitaine. This abbaye has some interesting Viking history. Due to its riverside location, the abbey was pillaged and destroyed twice by Norse raiders in 848 and 857 AD, prompting the monks to temporarily abandon the site before rebuilding in the 10th and 11th centuries. As with other abbayes we have seen, it being an active monastery during the French Revolution (1789–1792). Before the stone abbey buildings were constructed, the original 8th century monks lived inside the natural limestone shelters carved out behind the site. We could see the caves but entrance is by guided tour only, which I didn't know about.

Brantome is widely known as the "Venice of the Périgord". This nickname comes from its setting, as the medieval town centre sits on an island created by a natural loop of the River Dronne and an artificial canal dug centuries ago by Benedictine monks.

Rio had another run by the river and we got back to Kiwi just before it started raining, we were very lucky!

15 miles

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Thursday 8th October - Oradour-sur-Glane, Nouvelle-Aquitaine

It rained most of the night though only gentle rain which didn't keep us awake. Fortunately, it had stopped by the time we woke up. It was cold however and was still only 11 degrees when we left our site. It was a bit of a shock after 29 degrees a couple of days ago!

Google took us the scenic route to Oradour-sur-Glane. It was a lovely route especially as the sun came out, even Richard said it was nice!

We were going to visit Le Village Martyr where one of the worst World War II civilian massacres in occupied Western Europe occurred.

On June 10, 1944, four days after the D-Day landings in Normandy, the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich surrounded the village. They rounded up the inhabitants, separated the men from the women and children, and systematically murdered 643 residents The men were taken to barns and sheds, where machine guns targeted their legs before soldiers set the structures on fire. The Women and Children were locked inside the parish church, which was then set ablaze and targeted with incendiary grenades. Only one woman, Marguerite Rouffanche, survived by escaping through a small window behind the altar. The SS troop then looted and set fire to the entire village to cover up the atrocity.

Why on earth did this happen?

Four days after D-Day, the French Resistance intensified sabotage operations across southwest France to slow down German reinforcements heading north to Normandy. In response, Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle issued orders demanding swift, brutal measures against civilians in areas with partisan activity to terrify the local population into submission. On June 9th 1944, a high-ranking SS officer, Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe - a personal friend of the division’s commander, Heinz Lammerding - was captured and executed by a local Resistance group. Historical evidence suggests the SS intended to carry out a reprisal attack on Oradour-sur-Vayres, a nearby village known to harbour active partisans. However, the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich targeted Oradour-sur-Glane instead - a quiet, conservative village that had no active Resistance cells, no hidden weapons caches, and no garrisoned German troops. Even after entering the peaceful town and realizing there were no arms or partisans present, SS commander Adolf Diekmann ordered the systematic round-up and execution of the populace. The goal was no longer tactical; it was an act of terror designed to crush the morale of the surrounding region and send a message to the French underground.

Oradour-sur-Glane was not an active battlefield. It was chosen - largely by mistake or convenience - to serve as a sacrificial warning to the rest of occupied France.

After the war, President Charles de Gaulle declared that the original village should never be rebuilt or cleared, serving as a permanent memorial (Village Martyr) to the atrocities of Nazi occupation. A new village was built nearby in the 1950s.

We walked to the cemetery where the State Memorial Stele (Tombeau des Martyrs) was erected by the French government in 1953, this central monument lists the names of the 643 victims. The surrounding grounds house traditional family graves, where identified remains were interred. Many gravestones feature enamel portrait photographs of victims - including entire multi-generational families lost on the same day - along with porcelain memorial plaques. Two glass-topped ossuaries sit at the heart of the memorial area, containing unidentifiable bone fragments gathered from the ashes of the burned church and barns. Strangely enough the cemetery was untouched on June 10th 1944.

Last year we visited the Dachau concentration camp and that was bad enough but this, well, I can't find the words to describe how I felt. I asked Gem for another word for horrific and he came up with the following. They all apply in this case.

Atrocious
Appalling
Abhorrent
Monstrous
Heinous
Ghastly
Grisly
Macabre
Harrowing

We hadn't got far to go to our Camping-Car Park for tonight. It's a nice site and we have a view down over a pretty house.

57 miles
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Friday 9th October - Guesnes, Nouvelle-Aquitaine

A lazy start as we only have a driving day today, 95 miles. It's going to be a short update!

We passed through the village of Mortemart, which is another of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. We didn’t stop but could see that it was certainly pretty. I’ve found a map of the 180 villages so we will try and visit some more. Apparently, it is a charming , flower-filled village developed around the castle and built in the 10th century by Abon Drut, Lord of Mortemart. Destroyed on the orders of Cardinal Richelieu, only the keep and a few rooms, now used as exhibition spaces, remain . While the Carmelite and Augustinian convents bear witness to the village's religious past , the old market hall and the houses of prominent citizens remind us of that Mortemart was also a prosperous trading centre.

Our Camping-Car Park for the night is near a place called Guesnes. The history of the commune of Guesnes, surrounded by the Scévolles Forest, is undeniably linked to that of its convent. The convent of Guesnes then became a dependency of the Abbey of Fontevraud. The Hundred Years’ War and the Wars of Religion left their mark on the village. In 1944, the building was damaged by English gunfire and still bears traces of bullet impacts.

Our aire is in the Parc de Loisirs de Guesnes or the Étang de Guesnes - a 16 hectare natural recreation area built around a tranquil 4 hectare fishing lake. It was really quiet with a few fishermen with their array of rods - what happened to the lone fisherman with his one rod? The aire has 29 pitches and for quite a while we were here on our own until a British campervan arrived about 3pm. Rio loved it as he was allowed to mooch outside without being tied up.