We are just finishing four nights in an apartment called Le Porche de Sarlat in Sarlat-de-Canada. It's been a great base for the region. The apartment is right next door to the cathedral and we have enjoyed the bells and the live music in the square outside our apartment. There is a lovely little courtyard to sit in, we have enjoyed making a coffee in the mornings and fresh croissants from the boulangerie around the corner and sharing a baguette for lunch. The town is very picturesque and full of gift shops, galleries, souveneirs and regular pop-up markets. There are lots of restaurants in this town although we thought that they had dumbed down their cuisine a bit to cater for the high volume of tourists in town. There are a lot of French families camping in this area and generally having a great time!! How do the children stay so well-behaved in the restaurants?? One of life's great mysteries. I guess they just grow up with it?
I wanted to canoe down the Dordogne, and that we did! We rowed from Vitrac to Beynac which took us a leisurely 4 hours with stops along the way for a picnic lunch, swimming and relaxing. There were beautiful blue dragonflies, magnificent birds, limestone cliffs. hilltop chateaux and lots of families having heaps of fun and laughs along the way. What a joy!
MoneyPenny enjoyed some drives through the beautiful countryside and even had a much-needed wash this afternoon. We visited two chateaux which were not very busy and were in beautifully peaceful settings. Chateaux Fentelon and Chateaux de Losse - both privately owned beautifully restored. We found these smaller, less -frequented places to be the nicest to visit. There is a such a lot of history, beautiful gardens and fantastic scenery.
The Lascaux caves are, of course very famous in this region and we visited the most recent replica Lasceuax IV - a clever replica of the original which has been closed since the early 1960s following degradation due to human interaction, fungal infestations and deterioration of the artwork. There are great efforts to try and preserve the originals. It's a sad example of humankind destroying something beautiful. The replica nevertheless is very clever and quite amazing to see.
So tomorrow we take the next step in our coast-to-coast odyssey and will drive a couple of hours to reach Toulouse - our next destination. We have been finding the French radio a little like listening to Eurovision so have purchased some second-hand CDs and loaded up the player for tomorrow. MoneyPenny has had a wash and we are ready for the next stage of our journey.
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