Grandfather tells of horror

At the moment they spotted the fire, Margaret Timson and her 14-year-old granddaughter Kirsty were playing Scrabble. They were sitting at a picnic table in the shade of an old tree in their carefully-tended garden when they saw smoke, then, in moments, a towering wall of flame that swept down the hillside towards them. A few yards away, Margaret's husband Norman looked up in disbelief: the

entire forest was exploding in jets of fire, leaping from tree to tree and moving towards their wooden cottage at a speed that seemed impossible.

What happened next, 63-year-old Mr Timson said later, was of such horror he still cannot comprehend it. An idyllic afternoon in one of the loveliest places on earth was turned, in minutes, into a scene of horror. "I cannot forgive myself," he said. "How can I tell my daughter that her child has been burnt to death?"

Mr Timson, an ex-soldier, fought the flames. He brought out his garden hose and doused the grass around the cottage, a single-storey wooden house called the Cabane de Pin, which over the past year and a half he has restored from a nearruin to a comfortable home. This was where, having retired from his job running a stained glass factory in his home town of Wigan, he and Margaret, also 63, were to spend their retirement: a wooded valley in Provence, surrounded by lush greenery, tall trees, and a cool stream. Now the trees were on fire.

He realised his hose was useless against the ferocity of the blaze, and as the flames began to encircle them knew they had to run for their lives. Mr Timson began closing the shutters on the cottage and shouted at his wife: "Take the car and make for the main road!"

Fires had raged in this forest region north of St Tropez for days, but the fire brigade had managed to contain most of them and others had burned out without loss of life. But

this was different. Mr Timson did not know it when he urged his wife to flee, but an arsonist had started a blaze at six different sites in their part of the Massif des Maures, a mountainous, remote area filled with holiday homes and tourist camps.

Fire officers and police think the arsonist threw petrol bombs into brush dried to tinderbox conditions by the summer sun. As Margaret and Kirsty drove up the steep track that leads from the Cabane de Pin, the road along which they planned to escape was already engulfed by smoke and flames.

Mrs Timson turned left, towards the Sainte-Maxime road. She steered her Citroen through the smoke, but less than 100 metres from the cottage the car ran off the dirt road and wedged itself in a ditch. By now the flames, driven by the hot Mistral wind, were sweeping across the road, surrounding the car. Poles carrying telephone and electricity wires crashed down. Margaret and Kirsty abandoned the car and turned back, on foot, through the flames towards the cottage.

They covered little more than 50 metres before the heat forced them to take cover. They huddled in the ditch by the side of the road as the flames leaped over them, across the gravel to the trees beyond. At the cottage, Mr Timson finally secured the doors and the shutters and headed after his wife in their camper van.

The sight of her car, with flames licking around it, met him on the road. The Citroen was empty and there was no sign of Margaret or Kirsty.

He drove up and down the gravel road three times, through the flames and smoke, trying to find them. By then, they were already dead. As the fire rolled down on them, Kirsty tried to protect her grandmother by lying on top of her but their hiding place became a furnace. Their carbonised bodies were found locked together at the spot where they had tried to escape the flames.

"Norman was beside himself," Werner Viertmann, a neighbour in the hamlet of Bas Oliviers said. Mr Viertmann, who also has a retirement home in the valley, is one of the few people in the district who speak English and Mr Timson, who does not speak French, sought his help.

MR Viertmann continued: "It is a desperate story. If only she had turned right, instead of left, she would have escaped the fire. But in that place, where they were found, there was no way out." Mr Timson told his friend of the minutes that led up to the deaths. "They were enjoying a beautiful summer afternoon," he said. "The fire took them completely by surprise.

"They had been here since March, this was their second summer in the house. He told me they planned to do some touring in Spain with their camper, but would be spending most of their time here

"They loved it here. Before the fire he told me they were busy making plans for their 40th wedding anniversary. It was to be a great family occasion. Now he is in shock. He is a strong man - ex-military - and he has conducted himself heroically through all this. But he broke down when he was telling me what happened. 'How can I tell my daughter?' he kept saying. 'How can I tell my daughter? She put Kirsty in my care - how can I tell her that her child has been burnt to death?'

"It was not his fault. He did everything he could, but the fire was unstoppable. The person who started it is a maniac - but they knew what they were doing. As soon as one blaze started the fire brigade became preoccupied with that, then there was another and another. It soon went out of control."

As he spoke, a squadron of planes and helicopters bombed a distant hillside with water. The hundreds of tons scooped from the sea seemed to have little effect. At sunset, the sky turned mauve darkened by the cloud of smoke that hung over the mountains. Teams of firefighters, their faces blackened from soot and sweat, trudged wearily back from the forest as others moved up to what is effectively the front in a titanic battle.

Around the Timsons' cottage the fire is out, but the forest is ghastly and appears petrified. Everything is black or ashen and little spurts of flame dart eerily from the trees as spirals of smoke rise up from the embers. Yet the Cabane de Pin is virtually untouched. The grass around the cottage is scorched, but the wooden house is intact, strangely whole in a scene of destruction. Some denim shorts, socks and a T-shirt bearing the word Babe hang on the washing line. The Timsons' bicycles, which they used to tour the lanes and glades of the forest, are propped against one of the planked walls of the house.

On a sun deck, raised above the shrubbery, is a picnic table covered with Scrabble letters. The remains of Kirsty and her grandmother were taken to Fr骵s and a member of the family was arranging for them to be taken back to England, Mr Viertmann said. Detectives were searching the areas where the fires began today in the hope of finding clues, but so far all they have discovered is evidence that petrol bombs were used.

Families and tourists evacuated from their homes have begun to return as the fires are brought under control, but two other foreign holidaymakers, a Dutch woman and a Polish man, are known to be dead.

Forest fires in this part of France are an annual affair and arsonists are usually blamed for the chaos and damage they cause. Mindless vandals, misfits and social outcasts with a grudge are the usual suspects. But this time, in the incomparably beautiful forests and mountains of the Maures Massif, the police are looking for a killer.