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Published: November 19th 2009
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We have 4 one nighters(one night in each town)on our way back to Marseille where we have to be by Saturday to drop OO back and get ourselves ready for the train ride to Paris on Sunday morning.
So we plan to wander through the French countryside, taking in the sights as we do so and not overstretching ourselves with too much mileage each day.
We must say we have enjoyed France even though we were personally not looking forward to having to interact with the people who we thought would be arrogant towards English speakers like ourselves who have only a small grasp of the French language. We have found quite the opposite and we love the beautiful countryside we have found on our travels and the way life in the smaller towns and villages gentile. We had also thought that after so long on the road we might find that we might be too tired to really enjoy the country but again it has been the opposite and it has worked out very well that we are ending our adventure on roads and in traffic that is not as frenetic as say Italy or even Spain for that matter.
We are now getting used to the fact that daylight doesn’t really happen until 8am or thereabouts,especially if the dawn sky is cloudy or overcast,and this morning is like that except that there is also a heavy fog.So much so that we can’t see more than a hundred metres from the hotel car park as we head off for today’s drive to a small village near Brive-la-Gaillarde about 200km away.
Part of the weather problem is that there is no breeze or wind to move their and of course the other influence is the Gironde River that flows near Bazas through a wide valley.
We took the D12 to La Reole where we crossed the Gironde after passing through countryside that was given over almost exclusively to vineyards.It would have been spectacular to have had the sun shining on the yellow leaves left on the vines as the whole scene all around us was one of an autumn yellow colour.
From there we took the D668 to Duras,a medieval town with a rampart wall still in place similar to Bazas.
We have not encountered a lot of traffic and it is making it easier and more enjoyable to take in
the sights of the countryside and the small towns and villages as we pass through them.
We made it to the large town of Bergerac for lunch which we had at a boulangerie opposite the towns cathedral in the middle of the town.However, when we went over to take a look inside after we had had our lunch we found the doors locked and the building under renovation.Just our luck we seemed to have struck so many interesting buildings recently under some form of restoration.
Leaving Bergerac, we started to follow the Dordogne River valley where there were more small farm holdings rather than vineyards although there few farm animals to be seen from the road.
We continued to drive on through small towns with names like St-Cyprien, Beynac-et-Cazenac and Sarlat-la-Caneda before we finally made our overnight accommodation at Larche just outside Brive-la-Gaillarde.
We are staying in a park which has cabins,not unlike a caravan park,but the cabins are set out apart from each other.The place is due to close at the end of the month for the winter until April and even now we seem to be the only guests in for the night.
Because we have full cooking
facilities here we are going to have a slap up meal with RED MEAT!!We are both missing our usual doses of red meat but tonight we make up for it with a couple of generous pieces of Limousin fillet steak.We did check that we were picking our meat from the part of the chiller that was labelled ‘bovine’ because ‘equine’ or horse would be an option.
And what a tasty meal it was too with potatoes,salad and avocado to go with the steak.
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