Sarlat Pt 2

How good is France!? We've really enjoyed mooching around the countryside and sampling the local produce. The quality of the food, wine, towns and landscape never disappoints. Here are some more pics....

Time for the regular afternoon nibbles and wine in our little house in Sarlat....

Side street in Belves, another of the Les Plus Beaux Villages in France (there's a formal list and our area has a high density of them, several of which we visited on this trip)...

Monpazier, another of those villages. It had the weekly market on the day we visited. It is, like many others in this area, a Bastide town (a fortified village purposely built 'new', with tax and other privileges to attract people to live there). It was established in 1284 by the English. Many were also established by the French. This area of France was in dispute for centuries....

Great view from a bistro in the Bergerac wine region....

Monbazillac Chateau - owned by a wine co-operative of 50 local growers who make the sweet dessert wine Monbazillac, from mostly Semillon grapes with 'noble rot' (ie. grapes left to go slightly rotten then picked - a method discovered by the Benedictine monks who lived nearby at Bergerac in the 1200's)...

Afternoon wines in the main square in Sarlat...

Great views of La Roque-Gageac from Marqueyssac garden...

Bouncy rope ladder net in forest at Marqueyssac....

We saw the gardeners shaping the bushes at Marqueyssac using string lines and hand sheers to avoid causing damage to the box trees with mechanised equipment....

Canoeing down the Dordogne is great fun with fantastic views. The weather was pretty good but windy on some stretches, making going a little harder than it needed to be....

Our canoes parked at La Roque-Gageac whilst we sat on the terrace and had drinks, to contemplate the next stop....

We then parked the canoes at Castelnaud for a visit to the patisserie, so as to contemplate the next stop....

The views of Beynac Castle are great - so we stopped there too for another refreshment....

Milandes Chateau has a very interesting museum about Josephine Baker and oddly, an entertaining bird of prey exhibition. They recently restored the adjacent chapel with 1500's paintings unearthed beneath tiles and stucco...

An example of Cafe Gourmand - need I say more.....

Our final dinner spot in Sarlat....

Roofscape over part of Sarlat, from the glass lift near the main square - our house is the last one to the right of the pedestrian lane at the far left of the picture...

On the way back to the Toulouse airport we visited Rocamadour, a historic town and pilgrimage complex about an hour from Sarlat. High above the town is a castle subsequently used as a Bishops Palace. Its ramparts offer huge views over the town and valley....

The sanctuary...

Our last meal in France was a cracker, in a beautiful setting on the only street in the historic town....

Rocamadour - town at bottom, sanctuary (chapels) in the middle, castle at the top....

Our final (very brief) stop was to visit the Valentre Bridge in Cahors - a fortified bridge from the early 1300's. It is in pretty good repair and you can walk across it. The towers are higher than I remember - very impressive....