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Day 4 was a castle day, no caves were visited. After a brief visit to a nearby village, we headed to La Madeleine, an archaeological site that also featured a ruined castle.
A tour bus arrived just ahead of us, so we diverted down the road to a fortress called Maison Forte de Reignac. It is built into a cliff face overlooking the Vezere River. Steve had hoped to show me Peregrine falcons there, but no luck. The fortress contained a hodge-podge of antiques and artifacts, with some museum like exhibits. It is most spectacular for it's setting, and the view from on high.
Then back to La Madeleine, which is where the famous bison carving we saw on Day 1 was found.
We toured the castle ruins and listened to Steve wax poetic about the archaeological significance of the site.
Megan's blog for the first part of the day is here.
The morning ended with a quick lunch beside the Dordogne River with an appearance of a group of Mute Swans. It was nice to see them on their native continent.
The Photos for the morning can be found here.
Day 3 began with another brief visit to Montignac, this time I took my camera. The highlight of this brief stop was an old dog who was loitering outside a grocery store. When I entered, the dog scooted in behind me. His master was inside and was not too popular with the proprietor.
Wednesday is public market day in the medieval village of Sarlat. We spent the morning shopping for souvenirs and ended up with three bottles of wine, two of which made it back home. There was one public washroom in marketplace, with three self-cleaning toilets. Unfortunately, they were unisex, and the cleaning cycle took 90 seconds in between uses. The end result was incredibly long line-ups. How typically French.
In the afternoon, we visited the caves of Cougnac. The first cave we toured had no paintings, but was interesting geologically with awesome collections of stalactites and stalagmites. We were allowed to take photos.
Megan's first blog of the day is here.
Our guide in the caves was a young woman named Isabelle (shown below). She conducted both French and English tours simultaneously, speaking a million miles an hour in both languages.
The second cave contained a number of paintings and markings, dating back 14 - 15,000 years. They are more subtle than the other caves we saw, but impressive nonetheless.
Megan's blog for the second cave is here.
The link for the Grottes de Cougnac is only available in French (the first flag at the bottom).
My photo album for the day is here.
We spent the morning at Rouffignac "the Hundred Mammoths cave". In this cave, we rode a train which transports tourists with minimal impact on the cave. Again, photos were not allowed, although I took some of the cave entrance and the train.
Here is the official site for Rouffignac: www.grottederouffignac.fr/ .
Megan's Rouffignac blogs are here and here .
The next stop was our first castle - Chateau de l'Herm. This is a late 15th century castle that is now mostly in ruins. It was purchased by a couple, both archaeologists, who have initiated projects to protect the castle. It is also used for summer concerts and theater performances. The official website is www.chateaudelherm.com/accueil_ang.html
Here is a shot of Megan running around the castle:
In the afternoon, we returned to Les Eyzies for lunch, and then spent time at an active Archaeological site, Abri Pataud. An archaeologist demonstrated the three dimensional grid system used to record where artifacts and fossils are found.
Finally, we walked down the street to Abri Cro Magnon, where remains of the first modern humans were found. Interestingly, in French Cro means Quarry, and Monsieur Magnon was the owner of the quarry where the remains were found
Megan's final blog entry for the day contains sketches of Rouffignac, the castle and Abri Cro Magnon.
To see my photos from the day, click here.
I have departed from my usual photo presentation for the Caves and Castles tour for these reasons:
- We were not allowed to take photos at any of the archaeological sites. This is a French National law that I was not about to break. Therefore most of the really interesting caves that we visited are not represented by any photos. By using the blog, I am able to include links to official web sites of some of the locations that we visited.
- One of the members of our tour group was able to capture images of the sites, in her mind and sketch book. Megan Baehr is a 24 year old artist from Vermont. The purpose of her visit to the caves of southwestern France was to perform research for a graphic novel she plans to write about the pre-historic artists who created the cave paintings that we saw. She has graciously allowed me to provide links to her blog pages. I have attempted to provide links for each day, but you may wish to just read through her entire blog all at once.
Note about hyperlinks:
The blogging tool does not allow me to have links open in new windows or tabs. Therefore you should open the links by using the Right mouse key and selecting either new window or new tab.
As mentioned in Day 8 of our Paris Blog, we had a long Sunday of traveling before ending up at the cozy residence (Les Rosiers) of Steve and Judie the proprietors of the Caves and Castles tour.
To read about Megan's trip to France, read these pages of her blog : 1 , 2, 3, and 4 . (Or you can just read her blog starting from page 1 at your pace).
Upon waking up on Monday morning, I snuck out to see if there were any birds about. I was able to spot some collared doves, which are quite common. These birds are now spreading across North America and competing with our Mourning Doves.
After a wonderful breakfast we headed out and started with a visit to the nearby village of Montignac. I left my camera in the car, but got some shots of the village later in the week.
Next up was a visit to the Lascaux II caves. The Lascaux caves were discovered in 1940 by four teenagers, who had lost their dog. The caves were kept secret until after the war and eventually opened up to tourists. However, they were closed again in 1963 as the millions of tourists were damaging the paintings with their CO2 exhalations.
The French Government decided to replicate the caves and their art and Lascaux II was opened in the 70's. As mentioned, no photos were allowed, but you can link to the official site here: www.lascaux.culture.fr/ . The Wikipedia entry for the caves is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux
Megan's sketches of the village and cave are here .
After Lascaux were returned to Les Rosiers for lunch and then spent the afternoon exploring the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies, which is a stunningly picturesque village carved out of a curved cliff face.
Most of the photos I took on day 1 are of the village and the museum. Megan's sketches of Les Eyzies are here .
We finished with an authentic French meal at a restaurant in Turzac called La Source, owned by a very interesting dutch couple. The food pictures in the photo album are compliments of Megan, as I did not take my camera to the restaurant (duh). The restaurants website is here: www.restaurant-la-source.fr/
Here is the link to my photo album of Day 1.
