All that jazz

Ste Brigitte
Yesterday's weather: Lovely

Last week I was checking the local summer guide to events in the area and found that one of the weekend's events was Souillac en Jazz. The website wasn't particularly good but I learned that there would be bands around the town on Sunday afternoon and from 1.30 there would also be a randonnée jazz, a walk, accompanied by jazz music. It didn't give any more information than the start place and time.

It sounded good so we decided to get down to the town early so that we could get a parking space and have some lunch before the fun started.

When we arrived we found that there were already 3 or 4 jazz bands playing in town and we wandered around, pausing here and there to enjoy the music. We took our place for lunch early, which was just as well as the restaurant terrace quickly filled up. There was a nice jazz quartet playing on the terrace of the bar on the other side of the square and it was all extremely convivial.

At 1.15 the band packed up and we were enjoying our post-lunch coffee. At 2pm we left the restaurant expecting to find the main part of town busy with bands and walkers, but there was nothing going on.

I collected a programme for the weekend's events and found full details of the randonnée jazz explaining that it was a walk from Souillac taking in a couple of local villages and back(several kilometers), all accompanied by two jazz bands and 'please come suitably equipped for a hike'. Unfortunately we weren't and my flimsy sandals wouldn't carry me further than a walk around town. We then found some more posters saying that the jazz bands would be in Souillac during the morning and then there would be two more events, a demonstration of jazz dance at 5.30 and a jazz circus at 6.30.

Now, we like Souillac. It is a very pretty medieval town with lots of narrow streets, a few little specialist shops and some bars and restaurants - but not much else. Certainly not enough to keep us occupied for another three hours before the dance demonstration started.

This is just one little frustration over here. There is a lot going on at this time of year but information is sometimes sketchy unless you happen to be in the very town where it is going to happen, and even then events can change times at the drop of a hat.

However, we had a very nice lunch in very nice surroundings accompanied by some nice jazz music. Who could ask for anything more?