Caves and Stuff

We have been busy getting to some great places. The pictures show what we've been up to. The weather has turned a bit wonky - but we've pressed on. I finally got into Abbey Saint Amand de Coly which was built in the 1120's (!) near Lascaux. The Lascaux IV cave was (again) awesome and the building an architectural treat. Reignac is a fortified manor house south of Lascaux built on a cliff utilising 20,000 year old troglodyte ledges. It's furnishings and bits and bobs are great fun and very interesting. Finally we woke to blue sky and went canoeing on the strength of it. A great 4 hours, landing a few times including for lunch at Roque Geagac and coffee/pastries at Castelnau. The Gouffre de Padirac was awesome. It's a huge chasm (gouffre) next to the town of Padirac. There are four stages: decent; walking a huge underground chasm; an underground boat ride (look closely at pic - bit fuzzy) and then a walk up various levels to amazingly huge stalagmites etc and suspended underground lakes (not sure if blue colour is lights or natural). Look carefully for stairs and people to get scale - its huge. Lunch outside was awesome (with another stand out Cafe Gourmand). It's not far from Rocamador, which we then visited in the rain - even more atmospheric. We walked from the creek at the bottom to the Chateau at the top. With the goffre and Rocamador, our phones tell us we climbed 52 storeys yesterday!