Cahors

On Tuesday we drove an hour (but only 47 km (29 mi)) to the town of Cahors on the Lot river. The drive was beautiful, curving through valleys covered in the first frost we’ve seen. We had a fine lunch at Le Bergougnoux and then walked around town. Cahors is a pretty town, but hard […]

Hiking Périgord: Carlucet

We spent a week in Carlucet during our first trip to France together. We thought it would be fun to go see how it looks fifteen years later, so today we started our hike there. Some things seemed just the same – we recognized the B&B (now a gîte, or whole house rental) right away. […]

Hiking Périgord: Vitrac

We started Monday’s hike in the hamlet of Le Colombier between La Roque-Gageac and Vitrac. This handsome fellow was one of the first things we saw: He was either posing or studiously ignoring us… We were once again mainly walking through the woods. At the highest point of the hike we came out to a […]

Hiking Périgord: La Treille

Sunday’s hike wasn’t the most photogenic, as we mainly were walking through the woods, first on small roads, then on trails. We started in the parking lot of one of the local castles, Castelnaud, and our hike took us west and north. Castelnaud is high on a hill overlooking the Dordogne. We didn’t go in, […]

Seen Around Town

We had a particularly pretty sunrise a few days ago. Some days recently it’s been so foggy we can’t even see the other side of the river! The birds we were missing in Brittany are abundant here. The cliffs house hundreds of black birds called choucas. Every dawn and dusk huge flocks swirl overhead, coming […]

Dordogne Barns

There’s a style of barn here in the Dordogne that we’ve never seen anywhere else. What’s the purpose of the slatted sections? Air flow for drying walnuts? No, tobacco drying! We never imagined tobacco as a local product until we read it in Wikipedia. The local barns also have a lot of individual character, not […]

Hiking Périgord: Vézac

Fueled by our Thanksgiving leftovers, we headed out from La Roque-Gageac this afternoon on a hike that looped to the north and west of the village. It was amazingly warm – we never expected to be dressed like this on November 29th: After a short walk on a road, we headed up into the trees. […]

La Roque-Gageac: After the Flood

When we arrived in La Roque-Gageac on 1 November, it was raining, had been for a quite a while, and continued for days. We hadn’t realized, however, that things were actually pretty normal at that point. Then we looked back at some pictures for this post: By 6 November, that had all changed… Just how […]

Le Château de Beynac

The first time we visited the Dordogne, in 2004, we were surprised to learn that the English had spent a lot of time fighting the French here in southwestern France – not just during the Hundred Years war but for several hundred years. The English King Richard I was actually imprisoned in a tower in […]

Hiking Périgord: Beynac-et-Cazenac

On Sunday we visited the castle (château) at Beynac, which will be a separate post, and then headed out on a hike to the north and east of the town and castle. As an aside, what is up with the village names here in the Dordogne? At least half of them seem to be multiple […]