Our speediest departure yet! We managed to get up, have breakfast and prepare Eileen for departure in exactly 2 hours. That still sounds like a long time to me, but we cannot seem to do it any faster. We checked out of the campsite at Les Eyzies and drove to the other side of the village to the Grotte de Font-de-Gaume. We queued for 20 minutes until the ticket office opened and then managed to get on the 10.30am tour. We decided on this cave as it is the only one left in the area where you can still view the original paintings and carvings. Unfortunately, the tour guide spoke only French so we had to buy the book afterwards to get all the details of the amazing paintings we had just seen. It also enabled us to retain some pictures as cameras are, of course, not allowed inside the cave.
We then drove down through the villages of Campagne, Le Bugue and Limeuil, to Tremolat, all of which were really picturesque. We bought our daily baguette and had a picnic in Tremolat before driving back to Limeuil. This is a lovely old village built all the way up the sides of a steep hill above the river and ends at the top with the remains of an old mansion. The Jardins Panoramique which surround it are lovely and the view back down the hill is spectacular. The rivers Dordogne and Vézère join at Limeuil and there are two bridges at right angles which cross each river.
Apparently Limeuil used to be quite an important port until the end of the 18th century. Near the top of the village there is even a lovely old Perigordian house where ladies reputedly provided ‘comfort’ for the sailors and bargemen……. I’m not so sure, because if the sailors had had a drink in the bar by the river, there is no way they would have made it up the steep and slippery road to the top of the town; we were both really puffing strolling up there…. sober.
Next stop on today’s itinerary was at Aldi for more stores; this place drives me crazy, I can never find what we need and everything seems to be in large packs. The carrots looked good but we have no room to store thirty of them. So having made a few purchases there, we then crossed the road to the Intermarche to do the rest of the shopping that we needed. We drove a little east of Le Bugue and checked in to the Camping les Trois Caupain, had a swim in one of the two pools and then, quite late in the day, I cooked up pork in a cream and mushroom sauce with veggies, followed by cherries and chocolate. I also drank another glass of wine and felt the heady effects before I had even finished my meal. After much giggling and tears I then fell asleep in my chair. Rodney has now banned me from drinking more than half a glass in future.
It’s now Saturday morning and we’ve decided to do nothing much at all. We’ve had a late breakfast, missed the market in town, we’ve read our books and the one on the cave we visited yesterday. We’ll have a swim when I finish typing and then we’ll cook up a late lunch with the remainders of the pork filet, perhaps in a teriyaki marinade with rice today. We’ve both decided we may pass on the foie gras, which is a speciality of this area, because we have just been reading up about it and think the whole thing sounds quite disgusting. There’s plenty of nice things in the world to eat without excessively force-feeding ducks and geese in cages to produce grossly bloated livers. Mind you I also won’t be eating any frogs legs or snails, purely because I’m turning my nose up at the very thought of it…..! One of the tastiest things we have found is raspberry jaffa cakes, I think they beat the traditional orange ones! Luckily we bought a mega pack in Aldi……..!