We had lovely day on Monday, starting off with a visit from Paul, the young man who came to stay with our family for a few weeks in 2012 and with whose family Jorgia stayed at the end of 2012. After breakfast we headed into Rennes to look at the main sights. In the afternoon Jorgia and I kicked back and watched a couple of French movies.
On Tuesday morning we headed off in our hire car for a long road trip to the Périgord region. With stops we were on the road for eight hours and unfortunately Jorgia couldn’t do any of the driving because you have to be 25 to drive a hire car. Nevertheless, we made it to Sarlat-la-Canéda without incident.
I visited this town with my friend Anne three years ago and I was very keen to share this beautiful part of France with Jorgia. It is most well known for its duck and goose products such as foie gras but also for fruit and nut wines peach, walnut and chestnut. Yummy! We had a bit of a wander around the medieval village before having an early dinner. I enjoyed a lovely confit de canard.
Today we started our three day organised tour of the region. We were met by our guides, Maryanne and Matt, and they took us on walking tour of Sarlat where we were told about the architectural styles of some of the significant buildings of the town and how to tell the house of a merchant from the house of a nobleman.
Next stop was Domme where we enjoyed spectacular panoraminc views of the Dordogne River and surrounding area. It was simply beautiful with the colours of autumn everywhere. The villages in this region are just so quaint and picturesque. You can imagine Disney characters wandering the streets.
We then went to the town of La Roque Gageac. This place was just stunning. Troglodytes are visible in the cliff face and we took a little walk up behind the church. Interestingly, as the cliff faces south and is protected from the cold, there is a tropical garden planted along the path – banana trees, palm trees and bamboo. It was quite surreal. Amazingly, only 10 people live in this village. Due to a significant section of the cliff breaking off in the 1950s, many areas are now not stable enough to live near. After our little walk we went on a one hour boat ride in a traditional flat-bottom boat (called a gabarre) on the Dordogne where we had amazing views of several different châteaux.
Our final stop was the Château Beynac where Marianne shared with us the intricacies of how the 100 Years War and War of Religion panned out. She said that there was very little fighting and most of it was hashed out with diplomacy (i.e. usually arranged marriages between warring factions). But when there was a fight, she told us the best way to enter the château for invading soldiers and the obstacles they faced on entering. For example, the ground floor is always circular with nothing in it. This is so the invading troops had nowhere to hide from the defenders above. Also the spiral staircase up to the nobleman’s keep was always built in a clockwise direction in order that soldiers would be unable to draw their weapons. While we were at Beynac we were able to witness a beautiful sunset on the Dordogne.
We are both tired but looking forward to another excellent adventure tomorrow.
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