Trip to the Dordogne, April 2006

Our exploratory trip to France in 2006 wound up in Paris. But our last stop before that was the Dordogne, an absolutely beautiful region. We liked it a lot and spent and entire week seeing the sights. Highlights were the Roc St. Cristophe, the National Pre Historic Museum, and the caves at Lascaux. I remember an animal park where we looked at some forlorn bison as well as some other critters, a village that recreated farm life in 19th century France and some wonderful, real villages. It was, as I said, a most gorgeous region, but we couldn't afford to buy property. Nor did we want to, really. For it had already been discovered by lots of British and a fair number of Americans. We felt much more at home in the Ariege, in part because of the people we met there.

Nonetheless, it's a beautiful place and I think I took some nice pictures there. Here they are. The above photo was in the village of Beynac.

Beynac again with the Dordogne River in the background. I would not want to be a roofing contractor in the town of Beynac.

This is the beautiful Chateau Beynac perched on the top of the cliff.

The National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac sits underneath a cliff ledge. The museum was brand new, very state of the art, and it is beyond compare. All the exhibits were in French, of course, but we were able to understand a significant amount anyway. There were videos that showed toolmakers recreating tools in the fashion of the day, knaping stone arrowheads and spearheads, attaching them to shafts, and attaching the fletching. The amount of exhibits was almost too much.....too overwhelming to take it all in. But, all very fascinating indeed.

I took this picture from a hilltop village on a cool, foggy morning, somewhere between Albi and Sarlat de Caneda, a village whose name I've forgotten. I like the soft, painterly like quality of the photo.

And I think this was in Beynac, but I'm not sure. What I like about this photo are the slate shingles forming repeating patterns. They are very steep roofs, unlike the roofs down in the Ariege which are tile and much less steep. It suggests to me that this region has hard winters.