Stabilising

If you had looked really closely at the background of last Thursday's photo (but why would you?) you would have noticed something a little odd. We certainly didn't notice it at the time.

In fact, it wasn't until the next day, as Susan and I were making our way to the station to leave Lyon, that I realised there was a bit of a commotion drifiting across the river. We couldn't quite work out what it was about, but there was what sounded like quite a heated discussion mixed in with machinery of some kind - we couldn't see anything anwhere you would expect to see people discussing things.

And then we lifted our eyes:

It looks like they are drilling holes in the cliff face to insert some sort of reinforcing, probably steel rods, to stabilise the rocks. The building below is the offices of the canal company. We have seen similar work done in caves, and the results of this sort of activity in rock faces above mountain roads, and we have even seen similar rods being used to hold up the cliffs of the Cité Royale in Loches, but we have never watched it being done in the middle of a big city.