Out of the Périgord

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We've just spent three days crossing the Périgord. We stayed in Les Eyzies, where we visited the Font de Gaume, a cave with marvellous prehistoric wall paintings. It's the only French cave with multicoloured wall paintings you can still visit. (Lascaux, for example, is out of bounds - but they've built an exact replica of it that you can explore!) We were with a small group and led by a really enthusiastic man. He gave the tour in French, but every once in a while tossed and English word or two at us ("bison", "engraving", "don't touch").

The next day we stopped in Sarlat, a very beautiful town full of buildings glowing with the local golden stone. Also full of tourists - especially since we were there on market day. And what a market! Lots of food stalls, but also clothes, knives, leather goods, you name it. Coming out of Sarlat we rode along a disused rail line for about 10 km, passing through green woods and deep rock cuttings.

Today we rode through Rocamadour, a mediaeval village built vertically on a cliff face in a deep valley. It was a really important religious pilgrimage site at one time and is now a major tourist pilgrimage site.

The weather finally caught up with us today, and we endured sprinkles of rain from Rocamadour all the way to our chambre d'hotes in Gramat. Our host is a very warm and friendly woman from Ste Agathe, Quebec who's lived in France for 30 years.

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Comments

[Richard Migicovsky]

Timing
You seem to be moving quite fast. Are you ahead of schedule?

[rbcameron]

Timing
Hi, Richard - we did collapse a couple of stages early in the trip, but right now we're travelling one stage per day, and we plan to continue that to Nice. That pace gets us to Nice in good time to do the rest of our trip (3 nights in Alsace, then 3 more in Paris).