A trip round the neighbours - Day 7, France

Set off early from Bordeaux in fine sunny weather for my next destination, Montlucon. I'd picked Montlucon as it was in the right direction and distance on my planned route, but when looking for details on it found that it had a couple of things worth seeing. (Note: it should be spelled with a 'squiggle' under the c, but I don't know how to do that on Blogger!)

It was a lovely ride on very quiet roads as it was a holiday in France, so no trucks. However, I had my first problem of my trip - my satnav started wobbling about and as I grabbed it, the bracket broke in two! Luckily the next town I came had a hardware store where I bought some glue and sticky tape with which to attempt to fix it. The glue didn't 'take' so I wrapped some tape round it to hold it in place and headed off. When I was getting ready to go I found that I'd lost one of my custom earplugs. I looked around but couldn't find where I dropped it. I'll pick up some foam ones as I go along, but it's annoying losing a custom one.

I got to Montlucon, found my hotel, dropped of my luggage and went to find a museum I'd found on the Web. Mupop, a museum of popular music, was a five minute walk from my hotel. It's an amazing place tracing the history of popular music from early French folk tunes, which bear a clear resemblance to British and Irish folk music, through brass band and dance hall music, to the rock'n'roll era and beyond. When you arrive they give you a box with headphones to hang round your neck and you can pint it at an exhibit, press a button, then hear what the display would sound like. The folk music section has very big displays of hurdy gurdies and bagpipes used in traditional music, some of which sound very strange indeed.

There are rooms full of acoustic and electric guitars and amplifiers, and it particularly interesting in hearing many of the then popular French rock'n'roll and pop acts. I took dozens of photos and those below are only a small selection.

The museum is in the wonderfully  preserved medieval town centre which was almost deserted due to the holiday. Well worth a visit if you are in the area.

On the way back to the hotel I bought some epoxy and have tried repairing my satnav mount. Let's see what it's like in the morning!

 Display about a local rock'n'roll band who were popular in the 50/60s

 How many of these albums can you name? You could listen to a lot of them through your headphones

 Jimmy Page's grandfather used to lull him to sleep with a rendition of 'Stairway to Heaven' on this!