From 31st March Ryanair is starting three return flights a week from Tours to Marseilles on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays. These flights will continue until sometime in October.

At the same time flights to London Stansted will remain on the winter timetable of three flights a week until the end of June. Because of the drop in demand due to the fall in the value of Sterling, daily London flights will only run in July and August.


Sourced from La Nouvelle Republique

'Indre-et-Loire - Ryanair ouvre Tours-Marseille
10/02/2009 16:58

La compagnie aérienne Ryanair assurera trois allers-retours entre Tours Marseille à compter du 31 mars et jusqu'à la mi-octobre (la date précise n'est pas arrêtée), les mardis, jeudis et samedis. C'est un Boeing 737 qui effectuera la rotation. Dans le même temps, l'entreprise irlandaise réduit la voilure à destination de Londres. Le dispositif hivernal (trois vols semaine au départ de Tours) est prolongé jusqu'à la fin juin. Les rotations quotidiennes ne reprendront donc qu'en juillet et août. Frappée par la chute de la livre (-30 %), la clientèle britannique est, en effet, moins présente.'

La Nouvelle Republique also has extensive coverage of the storm that hit the region on night of Monday/Tuesday bringing down power lines, trees and damaging roofs. Wind speeds up to 125 kms were recorded. Poiters and Châteauroux appear to have been particularly hit.

The big freeze continues, although there was a brief respite during today when temperatures rose – occasionally it was up to 0˚C – some of the snow has thawed and most of the roads are now passable, except for small roads in isolated comunes. Tonight further low temperatures are forecast.

Today's Nouvelle République reports that over the night of Tuesday/Wednesday temperatures in Indre et Loire fell as low as -15˚C with -13.1˚C recorded in Tours. This, however, is not a record as this is still held by the night 29 December 1964 when -18.5˚C was recorded. Nevertheless the current spell of very cold weather is the coldest since the Januarys of 1985 and 1987.

Away from the cold I have posted more of my still unfinished profile of Mikaël Bouges.

Fredy Richard, who lives in the town, has recently launched a site that features 1200 old postcards of Loches and its surrounding area. Most of them come from the turn of the 20th century and are classified by various categories. Fredy is still collecting and intends to add more cards in the future. Loches is a popular and bustling market town on the River Indre in southern Touraine. It is famous for its château and its donjon, where prisoners were incarerated in appalling conditions. Nowadays Loches has a very good market on Wednesday and Saturday mornings.

View of the station at Loches

One of the postcards from the site. The railway used to run from Tours to Châteauroux, where it connected with the main line from Paris, Limoges and Toulouse. The railway line from Tours still runs as far as Loches but most of the service to Tours is provided by an SNCF bus. No trains run beyond Loches

www.loches-autrefois.fr

(From a report in La Nouvelle Republique 30th December 2008)