Blogs from Limousin, France, Europe - page 5

From our brief stay in the Loire , 500km drive to the Dordogne, another farm house on the outskirts of Sarlat de Caneda. Fortunately for toll roads, 130km/hr means you chew the k's quickly.... Canoeing on the Dordogne, another bloody castle (Castelnaud), and a few quiet days of not much...... read more

So its Saturday night 3rdAugust. Catch up time again as we have been too busy (and the wifi has turned ferral again). So, Thursday 1st Another walk day. This one a 12 km around La Roque Gageac. LRG is another old town but built into the cliff and right on the river. The walk takes us through the town, up over the cliff and into the farmland and forest behind. This is a beautiful walk on lovely shaded tracks. Plenty of farms of various types, with the most interesting being a Fois Gras farm with hundreds of geese. I imagine they would be fat but they actually look quite fit. We startled 2 deer in the forest as they crossed at speed 5 metres in front of us. Beautiful animals. We think we saw a marmat ... read more

HIDDEN FRANCE 5.Bort-les-Orgues I've just figured out something!... When I was a kid, my grand-parents used to rave about Bort-les-Orgues (pronounced 'Borleyzorg' and hence written that way). I was a kid in the 1950's, yes, last century. Yesterday, doing a bit of research on the net to be able to write something clever about the place, I learnt that the big hydro-electric dam there had been officially opened and put to use in 1951... That's it, that's why my grand-parents used to rave about it! In 1951 I was 7 and I vaguely remember travelling with them to the Massif Central to see the damn dam!!! It was in those days quite a technical achievement and it put the area and the country on the list of the most modern and daring of countries in Europe. ... read more

HIDDEN FRANCE 3. Felletin The unicorn has been killed... yes, I saw its skin! Yes, in a village called Felletin, about 20ks south of Aubusson on the road to Ussel. We stopped there to picnic on a bench for lunch and before driving on to Ussel, we decided to visit an exhibition of tapestries in the 'église du château'... except that the 'église' is not a church much but an exhibition hall and that there is no 'chateau' at all. Upon enquiry, the said chateau had apparently been demolished at some stage in History and the stones had been used to build this church. (Must check this info! I suspect evil deeds during the war of religions between Protestants and Catholics) It was the week-end of 'National Heritage Days' (Journées du Patrimoine) when all heritage buildings ... read more

Trip: HIDDEN FRANCE 1.On the road The trip goes from my place in St Civran, an unknown tiny village in the Region "Centre", to Champs-sur-Tarentaine, a farmlike Bed-and-Breakfast in a similarly unknown tiny village in the Region "Auvergne". It meant some 300ks across the middle of France, through yet another Region called "Limousin". Confusing?... not at all :-) The thing to know here is that France is made up of 22 Regions very much the size and purpose of the 'Länder' in Germany. For details, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_France. Provinces as such do not exist any more, and Provence is actually the name of a province... but I digress! So, at about 8 am on Saturday, under a grey and misty sky, my Japanese Helper Aska and myself sat in the car and I turned on the ignition ... read more