Sarlat

Tuesday, 22nd September

Driving to Sarlat-la-Caneda

After an early start manoeuvring the car out of the tightest car park and the narrowest driveway in the WORLD, we left Le Puy en Velay. We would have liked to stay longer, but we were to be in Sarlat by nightfall. It’s along way across the mountains of the Massif Centrale. We took our final glimpses of Le Puy from the road side and thought it would be a beautiful place to return to.

We drove on and stopped after a couple of hours at a little village, where a weekly market was on. We bought some pastries from a lovely woman who had an in depth conversation with Karol and Dick about how she was going to Australia. Dick was smiling and nodding enthusiastically and Karol was trying to understand what the woman was saying, but neither were any the wiser by the end of the conversation. We did get some delicious pastries though.

Onward again. We drove through some lovely countryside, stopping briefly for lunch at another quaint village, somewhere.

We approached the Dordogne region late afternoon and saw a sign Gouffre de Padirac. What is a Gouffre you ask. So did we. To satisfy our curiosity we queued up to buy tickets to find out. A gouffre is a large cave or series of caves, well Padirac’s is. We descended 10 flights of stairs (there must be stairs at any attraction in France to make it worthwhile – see yesterday’s blog) to an underground cavern and continued to walk further underground. We got into little boats (tinnies) and were punted along a river to see the most incredible caves in France, perhaps even Europe, although the guide refrained from saying the whole world. We were 103 metres underground and covered more than two kilometres. Stalactites of limestone have been forming for millions of years and one is 735 metres in height. The ceiling of one cave is 94 metres and the drips fall from such a great height that they flatten out and “stack up” like plates. Fantastic.

We eventually arrived at the hotel, Le Madrigal, unpacked and headed down the street to the medieval town for dinner. The local specialities are foie gras and cepes (mushrooms). We had omelettes with cepes and some fried, mashed potato concoction which was delicious, but very greasy. Pictures of geese are everywhere, and we did spot a little farm, with geese honking as we drove by. We stopped to photograph them. It must happen a lot because the geese seemed to flock towards the cameras.

The town looks very attractive, but appears to have been prettied up for the tourists.