26th Apr BOISSE PENCHOT - LA ROQUE GAGEAC

As we haven’t got a proper map or guide book we tend to plan our route using the aire book, so we don’t really know where we’re going to end up! We are in the Dordogne region at the moment and travelling on the more rural roads. So when we arrived at the aire today and were amazed by the village; it’s built into a cliff face – more cave houses! The aire book says “it’s worth a look”, but it’s actually considered “un des plus beaux villages de France” (even I could translate that!).

One of the most beautiful villages in France.

 

Look how high I had to climb (twice)

It was a VERY steep, long, climb up to the top, the paths were narrow and sometimes stepped; access by car wasn’t possible for many of the houses, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live there – shopping would be a nightmare. Oh yes, we had to do the climb twice as the Fort, which is usually open to the public, was being renovated and the pathway was closed between the two ends of the village (so we had to go down and back up!!!).

And thank goodness it was closed or Brett would have wanted to visit it and he would have made me climb this!

When we went to the tourist office we found out that this whole area is littered with caves, many with prehistoric cave paintings and engravings; tomorrow we’re going to try to visit ‘Grotte des Combarelles’ hopefully it won’t be too busy this time of the year (the lady in the tourist office said that, in the summer, people start queuing at 8.00 a.m. and are lucky to get tickets by 9.00 and if they’re really lucky it’s for the day they’ve queued!!).

The aire is next to the river Dordogne; usually there are boats and canoes on the river but there’ a notice saying that (translated) “due to the height of the river boats are forbidden”. The numbered gangways (which are where you would embark/disembark) are under a couple of foot of water and several feet from the shoreline. There are the tops of trees coming out of the river (you can’t even see the trunks) and masses of debris being swept along by the force of the water.

Brett said we should be ok as the river is a few feet below the car park; now we’ve learnt (from the tourist information leaflet) that across the road, on the wall of the post office, (which is a few feet higher than the car park) are, and I quote, “engraved in the wall, a spectacular record of flooding levels and their dates”.