And back to our red hot bed

Ok, so it's about 4.30pm, I'm sitting sorting out some of these postings when Jan rushes in and says "quick come outside, we have a very big forest fire near the village." Boy, was she right, it was so near, you could hear the crackling of the flames and the wind was blowing straight towards us. Conceivably, our escape route by car could have been blocked by the fire if we didn't move quickly, so I evacuated the house and moved further down into the village to check things out from a position of relative safety. Not so, the fire really caught hold and started to encircle the village, the air became thick with choking smoke, so we beat a hasty retreat to the next village, Montmirat, where there is a bar/relais and from where we could see all the activity. We counted in total 30 fire engines which came from all directions and we later learnt that there were 150 firemen. They were obviously well drilled because within 30 minutes they had a command centre set up in a field nearby and a helicopter circled continuously feeding information back to the ground. Most impressive was the 9 Canadair fire fighting water planes (above - there are only 10 in France) that 'bombed' the area around the village, two Trackers and a Dash 8 that dropped chemical fire retardants. They wouldn't let us back into the village until late so we had dinner in the relais and waited whilst things calmed down a little. As we drove back to the village later that night, we could see the blue flashing lights of the fire tenders all over the hills around us. Scary, but also very exciting. Welcome home!