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This is the view out of one of the windows of Bill and Teresa's room in Sarlat, from the very nicely situated Residence Saint Clar in Sarlat, which has a very nice gallery run by M. Balzac on the ground floor. |
Perigueux to Montignac (62.4k; 3:51 hrs; 16.2 avg kph)
We got off the train in Perigueux at around 11:45. We were anxious to start riding, and just headed off through Perigueux navigating by the seat-of-the-pants. We eventually found the D5 east out of Perigueux, and after about 45 minutes or an hour of riding through commercial and industrial zones, we joined the very beutiful Auvézère river just past Bassilac and the airport.
We followed the D5 into la Change, which was a lovely little village (in which we later wished we'd eaten lunch). At this point it was around 2 and we were getting hungry, but we had bought no food yet, and of course nothing was open in la Change (actually there were no stores there) but a restaurant which looked very nice, but we skipped.
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These pictures are in la Change. The bridge does not allow cars, but walkers can cross it. The pictures were taken from a little village park/picnic area with a pubic restroom! This turned out to be less exciting than I thought since the toilet was the sort that you have to walk into in order to use. |
We continued on the D5e into Cubjac, where again nothing was open (now approaching 3). But the ride continued to be lovely. From Cubjac, we took the D68 to Ajat and onto Thenon. By the time we got to Thenon it was nearly 4, and stores were open again. We had a delicious lunch of nectarines (I swear that peaches and nectarines in France are 10 times better than in the US), melons, cheese, baguette and orangina. Heaven! From Thenon we took the D67 into Montignac, where we found a hotel, the Auberge Le Lascaux, at which we ate a pleasant dinner, my share including as much foie gras as I could manager to order, and a lovely confit de canard.
Montignac to Sarlat (50.5k; 3:39 hrs; 13.8 avg kph)
I woke up early to go to the Lascaux II ticket office and try to get reservations to see the (duplicate) cave that morning. The office opened at 9am, and I was in second in line at about 8:15am (with a book) watching the rain come down. When the ticket booth opened, they sold me 4 tickets for an 11am tour, en Anglais..
I bought a little food for lunch, Bill and I had some croissants for breakfast, and went back to the hotel where we all packed, paid, and put our panniers in a closet to collect after the visit. Then we rode up a considerable little hill (it was only 2 or 3 kilometers) to Lascaux II. This is a reproduction, very painstakingly done and quite beautiful, of the original Lascaux, which was being damaged by the humidity and temperature changes brought about by the visitors. We had a little contretemps at the entrance. It turned out that although the office had told me the tickets were for 11am, they had given me tickets for 9:40am instead, but the ticket collectors graciously let us into the tour anyhow.
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After the guided visit (all these sorts of things seem to be by guided
visits only in France), we rode back down the hill, collected our
things, Teresa looked for an internet cafe, and I bought a bit more
food for lunch, and then we set off on the D65 southwest out of
Montignac along the river Vézere. It was sprinkling, after
some heavy rain in the night and early morning (with thunder,
lightning and all during the night), but not really raining hard. But
threatening. We rolled along the river (crossing the river to the
D706 along the other bank, into St. Leon-sur-Vézere.
Another lovely little town. We ate lunch under a bridge to stay dry, and then walked our bicycles to the church, where we stumbled upon some shelter, and spent another hour waiting out the rain, and taking the occasional stroll in our raincoats around town. The first picture on the left is the Vézere, the second is a bridge in Martignac taken from the same place but in a different direction. The third is an ally in St. Leon-sur-Vézere, and the second is the back of the church in St. Leon and the cliffs on the other side of the Vézere. |
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At around 3, the rain let up and we left St Leon. We followed the
road on the south bank of the river to la Roque St. Christophe. It
rained a bit, but not hard most of the time. We didn't go see la
Roque. There were a lot of people there - it seemed to be a very long
horizontal crack in the cliff that had been inhabited in prehistoric
times and had some exhibits about troglodytes. As we were
approaching, there was a lovely view, but the crack looked quite
crowded with tourists. Had a nice conversation with a couple from
england at a viewpoint. She had been a nanny in Seattle for a year!
For the rest of the afternoon, we took the D6 up and down hills across farmland towards Sarlat. About 5pm we got to Marquay which was tiny and charming, and had a deserted looking pleasant hotel. We asked the proprietor if he had any rooms, and he laughed! No rooms for 30 kilometers! This didn't make us feel very good since we were heading for Sarlat. We dispatched Bill at top speed toward the Sarlat tourist office to see what he could do. |
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In fact Bill got to Sarlat around 6 or 6:10, but the tourist office
had no rooms. They tried to call a chambre d'hote that they thought
still had rooms, but there was no answer. We met up with him at the
tourist office. He was going to the Hotel St. Albert at 7:00 when
they release rooms that have not yet been taken. He found one room,
but the clerk wouldn't give it to him since there were 4 of us (even
though he assured her we'd only put in two). But she phoned someone
else she knew, and reached him on his cell phone and he agreed to put
us up. He said he'd meet us at the St. Albert at 8:00.
We had a drink while waiting. The man who met us at 8:00 was M. Balzac of the Residence Saint Clar mentioned above. This is a very old building that has three apartments in it that he likes to rent out by the week. He very generously gave us one of the apartments for the night (actually we took it for two nights because it was so nice, and we liked Sarlat). And to show our gratitude to the Hotel St. Albert (which also garaged our bikes that night), we had a lovely dinner in their restaurant. Mine included a slice of foie gras in a reduced fruit sauce (I think it involved plums), and a rib steak in a Perigord sauce, which is a dark sauce with bits of truffle in it. Yumm. So eating there was not exactly a hardship! Sarlat is staggeringly beautiful. It has a very large, very well-preserved medieval old city. There are essentially no cars allowed in the old city, and there are lots of tourists, so it feels like you are walking around a busy medieval market (or an extremely large, well-crafted movie set). In fact, bicycles with panniers are a problem. You certainly can't ride them. The streets are narrow, cobbled, full of people and steps. And even walking them isn't that easy! Our rooms were off one of the larger streets down a little narrow cobbled path. Unlike many of the places we went, Sarlat was happening until quite late. Shops selling local food specialties were open late, and in the squares there were clowns, jugglers, musicians, etc. doing their stuff until 11:00 or so. In spite of the scenic qualities of the city, I didn't take any pictures I liked other than some of the ones from the windows of our rooms. The buildings were too chock-a-block for me to find nice pictures of individual buildings, and the overwhelming impression of being surrounded by medieval buildings is not something I know how to transfer to film. |
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Sarlat to Gouffre de Proumeyssac and return (59k; 3:18 hrs; 17.7 avg kph)
Teresa woke early (jet lag) and got coffee, tea (Earl Grey - it is very hard to train coffee drinkers properly), jam and croissants, and we had a nice breakfast out of the kitchenette in our apartment. We liked it so much there we decided to stay another night and make a day trip somewhere.
Teresa wanted to go to some cave with good stalactites and stalagmites. With many choices in the region, we decided to head for the Gouffre de Proumeyssac just south of la Buque overlooking the Vézere. Sue and I went shopping for lunch (and dinner, which we decided to eat out of our apartment); it was market day and there was lots of nice food in the streets. (We also bought our first bottle of vin de Cahors, which we became very fond of.)
After breakfast and shopping we packed up, and headed for an internet cafe where Teresa wanted to check on a couple things. We picked up some excellent little patisserie items next to the cafe, and then around noon headed out of town on a road that left from the northwest corner of the built up area of town climbing a steep hill up to le Pet and eventually joining the D25. We switched to the D35 into Meyrals. This is a small town that seems to be a bit of an artists colony. The town had recently had some festival that involved a lot of very amusing scarecrows. I have no pictures, but the ride was excellent on small roads with very few cars and lots of nice hills. From Meryals we continued on the D35 to Petit Bout, and then on what may have been the D31e through la Chapelle, St. Georges and Audrix to the Gouffre.
The ride from Sarlat to Mayrals was beautiful and hilly. After Mayrals, it was much flatter, and a lot of the ride was on roads that curved along the top of ridges affording great views, sometimes 360 degrees. Fantastic views through farmland. Tobacco and corn predominant. Also some sunflowers.
The Gouffre was very amusing. We had to wait 1/2 an hour before our tour left, and there was a hokey son et lumiere inside the Gouffre. They bring you in to a darkened chamber, then gradually light things up colored lights and dramatic music. Then a cage with some prisoners is lowered from the center of the roof of the cave (I though Batman was supposed to come in to rescue them, but it turned out this was the deluxe cave visit). Anyway, in spite of the hokiness, the rock formations, stalactites and stalagmites were magnicifent. Especially impressive were these limestone flows that looked a bit like frozen waterfalls. They had names like "the Octopus" and I don't remember what else.
We rode back to Sarlat along essentially the same route, except we took a small road from the D25 down to the D47 at Allas, and then took the D47 back into Sarlat.
