Following the footsteps of Cro Magnon Man

I must apologize for not editing the last edition better. In my defense, I was sitting in the sun – which means I couldn’t see my screen - and rapidly working to complete the entry before our parking ticket expired. Anyway, hopefully that has now been corrected.
In this edition of my blog I shall, firstly, set about to fill in some gaps in previous postings.
I’d like to give you a better picture of this area. I’ve mentioned the lack of straight roads, but I haven’t told you that this is a very lush countryside, rolling hills and deep valleys intermingled with cows at pasture and various crops in the very green fields – no shortage of moisture here. They have taken off one crop of hay already, but the corn is just about where we’d expect it to be at this time of the year in Canada.

Of course, at every corner in the Dordogne, there is a chateau, or at least a view of one & another impressive one we’ve seen just up the Dordogne from us, is Montfort, shown below.

We’ve also neglected to share the interior of our accommodations – Les Hortensias translated as Hydrangeas. I guess that’s because most of the pictures you see below are also viewable on the internet. The first shot is where our car sits in front of the house. The next shot is our spacious bedroom, followed by our spacious living room. The last picture is the private terrace, which is especially nice early in the morning and later in the afternoon and evening.




There are a myriad of things left for us to do in this area, including taking a Dordogne boat trip - although we knocked off some big ones yesterday.

Thank god for digital cameras, because yesterday alone I snapped off 129 pics and not too many are throwaways. There are fabulous images popping up everywhere.

Any regular reader should have recognized by now that there has been a lack of space devoted to wine since we’ve been in the Dordogne. In our travels to this point, we have yet to see a vineyard. Bummer! We did, however, purchase a very nice Vin du Perigord vielles vignes de merlot from St. Cyprien, the next village over. We’ve been to St. Cyprien and I’m not sure where they’re hiding their grapevines, because we sure haven’t seen any – lots of forests, lots of cows, lots of hay, but no grapes. Fortunately we brought lots of the good stuff from the Alsace, Burgundy and Rhone, so we’re not going to die of thirst.
Today, we chose to drive north of us into country that has some of the most ancient history. There are a myriad of caves – grottes - and cave dwellings here, many hosting inhabitants over 15 000 years ago. Since the day started off rainy and overcast, we weren’t sure we’d ever leave the car. Apparently we ARE sugar and we WILL melt!
We first drove through St. Amand de Coly, another Plus Beaux Village. It was pretty dreary today, but still drearily pretty.

At Montignac, famous for the fabulous ancient cave drawings of Lascaux, we headed south along the Verzere River. Not far down the road we encountered Plus Beaux Village number two – St. Leon sur Vezere.

Continuing along the Verzere, we drove beneath La Rocque St. Christophe, the site of amazing cave dwellings, which although up high now, were likely at river level when they were home to all little troglodytes ages ago. There was no metamorphosis of our weather, so in the car we stayed.

The Vezere Valley is another of those not so quick but delightful drives, with surprises around each corner, like the chateau or the foie gras on webbed foot shown below.


The end of our journey today took us to the bustling market town of La Bugue. Market had just concluded – boy I timed that right!

Then, it was back to Les Hortensias for lunch and a slow time before returning to easily the most spectacular spot in the area, just minutes down the road from us - Beynac et Cadezac - and our internet connection.