We moved today into the Perigord region, now the Dordogne, and found a market in a casual and relaxed square in Perigueux. Here we ate our fill of fois gras before buying a huge wedge of delicious mature cheese for lunch, from a cheeky gypsy seller in the market square, along with some more patisserie (the more liqueur in the crème filling in these delectations the higher they seem to be rated in our family. Addictive) and thick juicy tender cooked roast pork slices marinated in hot garlic and magic, which we ate with our crusty baguette for lunch. To die for.
Perigueux has the neighbourhood feeling of Paris about its squares which makes it a very pleasant walking city.
After a quick squiz around Bergerac, which has some lovely old medieval half timbered houses, mixed in with the new, in various parts of the centre ville, we headed on to an early night at our great winery up in the hills of Monbazillac, which produces vino en vrac as well as in bouteilles, so if we’d had an empty 3 litre jug with a cap we might have filled it cheaply from the wine bowser as we watch the locals gradually drift home from their long festive lunches in packed pint-sized restaurants in the surrounding villages on this slow rainy Sunday.
Monpazier, we visited the next day, is one of the most beautiful villages in France and incredible. Still, it is our favourite. We have a long list of the Most Beautiful Villages in France saved to our travel bucket list and over the next decade of travel here we hope to visit most of them. Laid out in parallel and perpendicular lines Montpazier was one of the bastides built by England to shore up her holdings after Eleanor of Aquitaine married the English king, Henry. It passed back and forth from English to French hands over succeeding generations and today remains one of the most perfectly laid out towns we’ve visited. All around are drystone walls. Another reminder of the English heritage of this part of France.
On to Belves which is yet another of the most beautiful villages in France, and another bastide town, with more hills topping lovely old squares. Here we followed up on a gite that we’d somehow collected a brochure for when we were in the wine region of Victoria in 1996. Pete unearthed it in our preparations so we brought the Belves brochure with us, found the gite, only to discover that it is still in the same hands to this day. A crooked little house down a crooked little allée in Belves: a great place to spend a week if one so chose.
Castlenaud-La-Chapelle: This bastide is perched high on the top of a hill overlooking the Dordogne River, and only vertical streets seem able to reach it, though the coffee, here, was a disappointment so we dawdled along to Saint Vincent-De-Cosse where we camped at a rural auberge on the banks of the Dordogne. Here we sat at a picnic table watching an animal, like a wombat with a rat’s tale, trying to swim with sharp foxy agility between two tiny islands, but when he took off down stream the rapid pace of the flooding current whipped him past so we could see him no more. We feared he'd drown. The Dordogne is practically in flood. Everywhere it is breaking its banks, running higher than normal and that is scarey at times. We are now experiencing rain in patches, but we’ve arrived at the end of much of it, and it is gentle now and has the decency to stop when we stop, and to start when we no longer need a break, and it rains all night on our motorhome roof which doesn’t bother us a wink. As in Camelot.
Today we trekked to Rocamadour (Thank you for the recommendation, Wendy.). The satellite navigator took us there via what seemed an ancient pilgrim route, over every steep mountain pass and impossible narrow winding lane in the Dordogne, that climbed higher and higher. Our little motorhome clung to the cliff edge and managed to keep on going despite pretzel roads and sheer rock cliff faces on both sides at times. The drive itself was a major experience, let alone the village. These roads are thanks to the sat nav setting, which is avoiding tolls and busy routes. We favour the slow scenic variety, many of which happen to be slow and winding.
Rocamodour is on everyone’s bucket list of places to visit. It is where the pilgrims climbed impossibly high steps to get to their penitential cathedral, on their knees, in order to bow before the Black Madonna at her special altar. Their knees must literally have been bleeding at the end. Their clothes must have been in rags. Their cries of absolution, forgiveness and hysterical joy at finally attaining the Madona in order to be absolved of their sins must have reached a pitiful pitch. The village itself is all a stunning period piece and vertically challenging.
The church smells, feels, and looks like pilgrims might still struggle up to its altars on their knees at any moment. There are tiny dark mouldy adoration alcoves off all sides of the tiny cathedral courtyard. The pilgrims of today, though, can choose to use an elevator: one to gain access to the cathedral, another to gain access to the shops. I am not sure how many folk actually even visit the cathedral any more, though, and the shops are typical of these ancient beautiful towns, filled with all the food, drink and tourist tatt that modern day pilgrims who flock here expect.
Figeac (pronounced Fee-zhack) our next port of call is not even underscored as a tourist interest point, but if anyone ever wants to spend a week, or a month in France, and be in the centre of all that is amazing about the Dordogne yet be in a town that is vital, historical and cultural (it has a copy of the Rosetta Stone in its cultural museum here), then Figeac is just the ticket. It is real. It is fascinating. We loved it. It has narrow medieval alleyways where only carts can be pushed, amazing historical buildings in huddles and clusters, markets and modernity along with antiquated atmosphere. Figeac has it all.
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie is possibly my second favourite most beautiful village so far (I doubt Monpazier will ever be beaten). Our sat nav took us to Saint Cirq on roads similar to the rough winding mountain tracks that pilgrims laboured up. These, in part, were sheer grey rock and looked something that I imagine a spaghetti-western backlot in Texas might look like. There have to be easier routes to Saint Cirq, but I think we were meant to go these difficult ones: absolution, mayhap. Contrition. Penance. Confession.
Saint Cirq, looking up from down under, on its approach road, looks impossible to attain. As if no car could possibly get there. But when you do get there, park, and take your walking pole in hand in order to climb yet higher than any road dares go, higher than the cathedral, high up on tiny tracks past the Lapopie rock, shaped like a woman’s breast which is why Saint Cirq Lapopie gets its name– then pause to look down, even the pilgrims' cathedral below, seems sited in some sort of humanly attainable perspective.
St Cirq is spectacular. It clings to its vertical cliff face by some tiny engineering miracle. There seems to be no commonsense explanation as to why it still exists there to this day. I can’t believe it hasn’t all just crumbled silently one wet and weepy night into the bottom of the rapidly running river far beneath it. How did the engineers 700 years ago know how to build cathedrals, houses, streets, cantilevered so effectively onto a cliff-face in such a way that it is as structurally sound today as it was back then? Why is this astonishing feat not some engineering wonder of the world? Amazing. Its little alleys, so incredibly narrow, between tall aged buildings are only wide enough for waste and roof water. They are called entremies.
Tonight, we are camped in a set up that would rival any National Park in Canada. It reminds us of the immaculate facilities in Canada which we’ve found nowhere else in the world. The Rangers there would have been proud to offer such facilities as we had this night for free. Our accommodation in France at all these interesting places (a duck fattening farm: foie gras producers; ferme d'escargots: an escargot plant; pigeonaires: for pate, cognac and pineau producers, a rurale auberge on the banks of the flooding Dordogne) has all been completely free as we are members of a club, France Passion, that receives invitations to stay in these amazing places gratis. Where else in the world could such a thing happen?
We are parked tonight under massive pine trees, with a purpose-built log cabin amenities block all to ourselves on private property with a massive modern expensive looking charcuterie (du Causse, in Aveyron) outlet beside us. This all sits in a field close to the owner’s modern French country home, surrounded by acres of precisely mowed lawns spreading way down into the middle of at least three tiny villages as far out in rural heaven as you can find in France. Who would ever find their way to a chacuterie outlet here? Not in hours has a car even driven past. Notwithstanding, there are tens of acres of immaculately mowed beautiful lawns surrounding us. And, in fact, a delightfully helpful worker mowing spiced green grass tops, still, early into the evening as we are preparing for yet another big walk tonight. It is all practically ours alone, even the owner is in absentia. One of my favourite evening stopovers so far. We have nothing to do but enjoy it all at our leisure, so off on a village walk we go.
Villefranche-de-Rouergue: Here we experienced one of the largest provincial markets so far, in a market square surrounded by an ancient eglise, towering darkly over the stalls. Produce came from far and wide, including Espagna (It was disheartening to realise that all of it was not from France, actually.) but, to be fair, most of it was the excess from the sellers’ own vegetable plots – and they were the ones who sold their product first. Our lettuce needed three rinses it was so fresh with fertiliser and soil.
We struggled to find a park in Villefranche-de-Rouergue in the morning, as it was market day. By mid-day, when we were done, and the market was over, there wasn’t a car to be seen in this good sized town. All of France disappears indoors for these long lunch time hours, and parking, anywhere, can then be had with ease. If one wants it. Usually, this is the best time to drive, too, as the roads are practically bare.
Belcastel: Again, this is one of the most beautiful villages in France, and, I suspect, one of the most expensive. It is so picture postcard perfect that there is a photo op at every turn. To me, it was Yorkshire Dale’s Pateley Bridge set down in its appropriate counterpart setting in France. Added to which it was a walkers’ haven. Walkers and horseriders were out in great numbers, which was good to see. This would be a great centre to use as a base for a holiday. There are information boards bearing suggestions for circle walks, day walks and long distance walks. Perfect, too, for summer weddings–right beside one of the prettiest waterways in France.
Sauveterre de Rouerge: This was the most modern and minimalist of the most beautiful villages of France that we’ve seen to date. Swept immaculately, too. The market square had perfectly spaced ancient arches on all four faces of the first floor of every building front– in exquisite style-- with cobbles underfoot well worn and perfectly smooth, dotted with pots of perfect round balls on tall lean trunks adorning it all. Straight out of a decorating magazine. Brilliant!
Monestes: We came across this village accidently. It is one of the listed most beautiful villages in France and rightly so. It was like being behind the scenes of a theatre set, straight out of one of Will Shakespeare’s plays. The view from every market arch, down every twisted little alleyway is just how you would imagine Shakespeare would have wanted for any of his plays.
Cordes-sur-ceil: We had to pay for parking here, and the higher you walked the more parking cost. We paid little in cash, but heaps in energy. Cordes is shaped like a perfectly conical hill and from a distance could have been one of the gorgeous hill towns in Italy. The streets were full of artists and glass makers at work, along with restaurants and bars for the visitors. It was beautiful, expensive and utterly exhausting. Walking these hill towns is hard hard slog.
Penne: We turned a corner and at our first glimpse of Penne, perched on the very tip of the highest rocky outcrop in the area, burst out laughing. It is built like an eagle’s eyrie: impossibly high, impossibly steep, impossible to build, impossible even to walk there. We never did make it to the top: it was just too dangerous. How an eglise was built way up there beats me. Walking uphill in this village was as tough as any mountain we have climbed. Walking downhill was shocking pressure on your toenails. How one earth did the medieval folk do it? And whomsoever trotted down that hill, then back up, every single matin for the seigneur’s petite dejeuner croissants from the artisan boulangerie down below deserves a medal. Devoted loyal subjects, no doubt. And amazingly, we found ancient smoothed measures for grain built into one of the village walls near the market place.
Bruniquel was another of the more elegant and beautifully maintained villages. One thing, though, that increasingly strikes us is--who lives in these villages once all the tourists leave, when the lights go out and the curtains are pulled? Most of the population during the day appear to be there to ease the tourist need. Do they own places? Do they rent? Do they even live there? The remaining population seems to be so old that they could barely walk up and down these hills even to get their daily baguette. Such a worry. Who owns all the homes? Who maintains them? So many, too, are available for purchase, or for let?
Saint Bertrand-de-Comminges: What a wonderful pilgrim eglise here. This, from what we can gather from the little information we can decipher from the French is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Because of the nave. Because of the choir stalls. But the wonderful part of this church is none of that: it is the flagstones worn smooth with never never-ending pilgrim footfalls, the oil from the hands over the centuries smoothing the altars feather soft, the ancient statues, the special sites for adoration. I loved all of it. Tho’ the town reminded me of the Greek islands nearing October. There, I am sure, at the beginning of May they bus in large groups of German and French university students who need a job of work for the summer, give them jobs as souvenir salesmen or barristers and waitresses, using bulk storage piled up for the summer in all the closed buildings in the village, then open the gates of the village to bus loads of tourists. We are not good tourists. We rarely buy stuff. We didn’t enter one shop.
Today we drove on to Lourdes through the High Pyrennnes. Within no time at all we then left Lourdes as quickly as we could. Which, perhaps, was not quickly enough.
We saw thousands upon thousands of pilgrims there to visit Saint Bernadette’s miracle sites. Many with walking sticks, many in wheel chairs, many hobbling on helper’s arms. Entire schools of young girls in their uniforms were there on some sort of pilgrimage, winding their way to the grotto, singing hymns enroute. Nuns. I didn’t know there were so many nuns left in the world as there were on the streets of Lourdes today. The sad faces of those who were not helped is enough to make you not want to be here. There are hundreds upon hundreds of tour groups. There are busses from the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Portugal, battalions from Spain and from probably every other drivable country on the continent.
We have not seen so many people (and it is not even tourist season yet!) outside of downtown Nanjing Lu in Shanhai on a Sunday when most of the 12.6 million population of the city converge, as a matter of course, on the Bund. Same with Lourdes. Even the Vatican City does not have such crowds. They are there for a miracle. What they get instead is shop after intolerable shop loaded with statuettes of the Virgin appearing to Bernadette.
Tonight we are camped on an Alberge in the foothills of the Haute-Pyrenees. We have watched the resident (mad?) farmer. He puts us in mind of Peter Sellers. He has chased a milch sow around the grounds three times with a stick and a shield he stores in a disused horse float. He has mowed, three times, the wet patch of grass outside that our camping car is sitting on. Yet, if he has even bent a broken head of grass with the mower, let alone shaved a centimetre off in that time, I would be most surprised. I doubt the mower even has a rotating blade installed. There are dogs, chickens, sows, piglets, animal implements, horse floats and assorted bits of agricultural machinery everywhere! And mud. In the morning there will be even more mud as it is now raining. There are none of those lovely sharply ironed white linen or white lace straight curtains at the windows that the French so love – and that I have fallen in love with, this trip, all over again. I don’t think the lady of the house lives here anymore. I wonder why.
Last night, the man of the house where we camped near Toulouse did not live there anymore. He’d moved to town. It was fairly obvious why. The older lady of the vineyard (who was delightful, in spite of this) arrived home so absolutely soused she could barely walk to greet us. She had driven herself home from wherever she’d spent the afternoon, and parked her car – expertly!—with not even a scraped side view mirror. She even needed to use a prop to wander over to welcome us to keep her upright. I think she did that three times, her French flowing all over us in effusive welcome, as freely as her whisky flavoured breath. A young good looking man arrived at her door some time later and was there for the night. We are enjoying our evenings enormously.
Things we are loving: Tall beautiful lines of trees covering practically all the country roads we are driving. These, we have read, were planted on the orders of Napolean, in order to shade his army as they walked to war. Music in pilgrim cathedrals: Someone must have tipped off the flower change ladies in these holy places that if you play music (ancient lute, whisper soft organ, or massed male choristers mostly at a pitch of barely audible) so very very quietly that visitors to the cathedral would be unsure if they actually could hear anything at all, but sense, because the hair on the back of their necks stands on end that something is there, something, like the distant sound of massed pilgrims walking, chanting. Hauntingly tearfully beautiful. Poppies. Oh, lord, the poppies. And we are in pigeon heaven. Everywhere, we are seeing pigeonaires–like the dovecotes in England. Peter has taken to photographing the different ones we see–at the risk of regularly being abused by the fast flogging drivers who occasionally have to veer because we occupy still space off a road they are trying to monopolise. The bread. French bread is from heaven. And that’s a fact.
Odd things: Why, in a land of fat buttery cows and extraordinary cheeses is fresh milk so difficult to come by? Why do the supermarches stock long aisles of long life milk and just the smallest store of fresh milk? Some things leave us wondering.
