Dream about tomorrow, but live for today….
By the time we fell in to bed on Tuesday, the cicadas had thankfully finished their noisy concert, but Eileen just couldn’t cool down. Her temperature inside hit 35°C and then hovered around 31°C; her velvet lining was warm to the touch and staying warm. When we woke up, it was a relief to find the thermometer had dropped to 25°C, but it was forecast to be another very hot day. By 9am we were all packed up, had waved good-bye to the friendly Dutch owners and we were on the road north.
Approaching Cahors, there seemed to be an awful lot of cars parked along the roads and the first car-park we saw looked full, so we crossed back over the River Lot at the next bridge, and parked Eileen near the Ile de Cabessut. We both had a good feeling that for a French town to look so alive on a Tuesday morning, it must be market day. We unhooked the bikes and set off along the river, back over the bridge and into the old part of the city. We locked up the bikes next to the rather gloomy cathedral and set off on foot. Just around the corner, there was the market, in full swing and there were crowds of people filling up their baskets and shopping trolleys.
Cahors is set within a big loop of the River Lot so we started on the east side, and with a map in hand, we strolled through the newer part of town to the west side where the major highlight sits. The Pont Valentré, also known as the Devil’s Bridge, stands proudly across the river with its three tall towers and seven arches looking like the wall of a fort. It’s a wonderful sight especially with the greenery of the opposite bank as a perfect backdrop. According to our guidebook, the English were so impressed with it during the Hundred Years War, that they never attacked it; that seems a little generous in wartime; “nice architecture, let’s leave it there”. Dawdling a bit more through the old town built up an appetite, but unfortunately, we picked the worst meal in France that day for lunch; ah well, you can’t always get it right.
Driving along the Lot Valley, the heat was unbearable, well almost; we had to bear it, or curl up and cook. With no air-conditioning in Eileen, even Gracie our geranium had curled up her colourful petals and obviously wasn’t enjoying living in a slow oven. At one point, I considered running in to a field of corn, just because a sprinkler was spraying water in a big circle across the field. For just a moment, only a small moment, I wished I was a little corn stalk. We did see a lot of people standing in the river or sitting on the top of the weirs trying to cool down. It would have been nice to do the same, but we needed to get Eileen and our fridge into some shade before they both melted.
The campsite closest to Saint Cirq Lapopie, looked like an ideal spot to stop, but then at the last minute we changed our minds; it didn’t have a swimming pool !!! If we didn’t get under some water soon, I thought we might melt. There was another campsite, Camping La Truffière, just 3kms up a hill outside the village which did have a pool, so we drove up there instead. The check-in was slow, but very friendly, then the two of us took ages wandering around at the top of the hill trying to find the shadiest place possible and then more time trying to get Eileen level and the awning out to protect the wall of the fridge. It must have been nearly an hour before we walked back down the hill to the swimming pool, but gosh it felt good when we finally flopped into that cool water and soaked ourselves.
The forecast was for an even hotter day on Thursday, but mercifully, there was a cover of cloud most of the day, so though still in the thirties, we never felt as pooped as the previous day. After spending my morning doing a pile of washing, Rodney cooked up some steak for lunch and at 2pm we followed instructions for a stroll across the fields to the village. It turned out to be a fifty-minute ramble via a rather circuitous route; uphill, downhill, uphill and then steeply downhill to what has to be the prettiest village in France.
Saint Cirq Lapopie tumbles down the hill, like a rolling stone, to the very edge of the cliff, and then seems to hover above the River Lot. The chateau on the top of the cliff is long gone, but the church does a fine job of standing over the jumbled labyrinth of houses, many of them built in the 13thC. Even in the heat, it was a joy to walk up and down the steep paths and alleys and soak up the views of the beautiful Lot Valley. It’s not as perfect as Disneyland, there are weeds and cobwebs and all sorts of things that make it seem so genuine, enigmatic and romantic, but it is just lovely and somehow just right. My only worry was that the town is named after a saint who was only three-years old !! How can a toddler have performed a miracle at that age?!
At 5pm the campsite owners provided us with a lift back to Eileen, thank goodness, and another swim in their pool was a welcome relief at the end of the day.
The food cupboards had now become ovens, the fridge had become a cupboard and the tiny freezer box had become a fridge. The lettuce had turned to mush, the chocolate supply had sadly melted and the only cold water was in the freezer box. Even the cold taps were producing hot water. When we made the bed up, the sheets and pillows were really warm to the touch when they came out of the cupboard and the desk fan buzzed away all night…………
Despite the heat, we decided to make Friday a real touring day. First stop was just eight kilometres down the road at Bouziès. There used to be a towpath, the Chemin de Halage, all along the River Lot and this section was highly recommended, so we set off in the direction of St Cirq and found exactly that. Just before the next lock, the rock came down so steeply and close to the river that a three-hundred metre stretch was cut away underneath to make it two metres wide; enough for the horses or oxen to pull the gabarres or barges, it’s amazing that they went to that much trouble to create a path. There is also a beautiful thirty-metre long bas relief that was carved in to the rock by an artist in 1985. The contrast between the rough and the smooth stone was beautiful to touch.
To leave the village of Bouziès, we needed to drive across a very narrow bridge. Our weight wasn’t a problem, but the sign said it was a 2.2metre wide bridge and Eileen is rated as 2.17metres, it seemed a bit tight to me, but Rodney was confident, and I managed to keep my eyes open as we crossed, mainly because the view ahead was so interesting. The 12thC Château des Anglais was literally built into a cave in the cliff on the opposite river bank during the Hundred Years War, and I would have loved to see inside it, but it is apparently not accessible.
At Conduché, we turned away from the Lot and followed the lovely River Céle through more mediaeval villages; Cabrerets, Sauliac sur Céle, Marcilhac sur Céle and Corn (yes, Corn), where we turned again to zigzag up to Assier, where we stopped for a pique-nique on the village green. There was no-one around but a handful of people who all seemed to appear, one at a time, from nowhere and then walk down a lane on the right-hand side of the church to disappear again. When we had finished eating, we just had to take a peek to see where they went. The attraction turned out to be just a small café that was still open for lunch, nothing amazing at all, but it was a pretty, village and oh so peaceful.
Rodney is starting to fade on the subject of mediaeval villages; they are all very different and beautiful and every single one we pass through is worthy of a glance at history. He thinks he has overdosed and we’ll never get anywhere if we keep checking them all; but we had a few more yet to see. The massive triangular red stone Chateau de Castelnau-Bretenoux was pretty impressive from the outside as it rises high above the Cère and Dordogne rivers and can be seen from quite a distance away.
Finally, with the thermometer outside the chemist showing a temperature of 45°C, we pulled in to Camping Les Iles which is set on a small island in the Dordogne, right in the village of Beaulieu sur Dordogne. We tucked Eileen under an oak tree (they always seem to be oak trees lately) and took a short stroll around the maze of little lanes in the mediaeval (yes more) part of the village. The south doorway on the Romanesque Église St Pierre has an interesting restored sculpture; there are creatures doing horrible things to some humans, maybe they were also struggling with the heat back then and went mad!
A cold drink in the shade on the Place du Champ de Mars, helped cool and calm us a bit, but it was another swimming pool dunking at 6pm that really did the trick. The forecast says this heatwave is due to continue for at least another week, so we’ve decided not to buy any more food that needs to be refrigerated, or cooked. We might have to eat out for a while, me thinks……
