Ou est le marché ?

Had a bad night, which I blame on watching England’s dismal performance at Euro24 ( the latest of 3) after seeing Holland beaten by Austria – which sets NL up as potential opponents FOR England in the next round. Always a stressful situation in our household. (Update – turns out we have dodged that domestic bullet – it’s Slovakia instead)

So on Wednesday we took a trip to Autun, just on spec, as there was supposed to be an interesting market there.  This turned out to consist of about 3 stalls ( ” Ah, mais le mercredi, c’est le PETIT marché ” they cried pityingly at the stupid tourists). But there’s always something to go “Ooh” at,  and this time it was the discovery that Autun was previously an important Roman settlement on their major  N/S highway up to Boulogne. Augustodunum was a bit of a mouthful, though, so once the Romans cleared off, the locals settled for an autun-ative spelling and quietly dropped most of the letters. But they hung on to some impressive buildings, inc the largest amphitheatre in the Roman world ( allegedly) – originally seating 20000, though the top tier has since collapsed ( another metaphor ?).

And there’s still most of the city wall intact. Not quite Eboracum standard, but made for an interesting saunter round the place.