Wandering Europe 2010: Dordonge...

One of the difficulties of traveling alone in a foreign land is not knowing how to say the place names. We find that unless we can pronounce a towns name it just won't stick in our memories.
If we ever want to know how to pronounce a french word, which includes most of the words in the language, we use Acapela Text to Speech (http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html). A free online service which works a treat.

In the afternoon after Lascaux, we took a senic drive in the southern Dordonge region. Now with Kathleen and Wendy our GPS team, we don't have to worry too much about how we are going to get to where we want to go. More importantly we don't have to worry about how we are going to get home. We are free to drive off into the unkown, safe in the knowledge the GPS will always get us home before pumpkin hour.

To help the co-driver to navigate we have a year 2000 Michelin, France, Tourist and Motoring Atlas, bought in a charity shop in a small English village for the grand investment of 1 pound. It weighs about 1 kilogram and is the size of the Sunday Mail. The scale of the Atlas is 1:200,000 or 1cm = 2km. Good enough to give all but the smallest roads/tracks and the smallest hamlets.

We don't how we would navigate around the back roads without a GPS because most minor roads are not signposted. The process driving around the countryside works like this for us; the co-driver/tour director picks a town, the GPSes are set and we head off in that general direction, free to make off the cuff detours, on purpose or by accident, eventually we arrive in the designated town, often by a rather circuitous route and often with much protesting from Kathleen (it must be the Irish in her). The Citroen GPS, Wendy on the other hand is very discrete when you go off course, she simply re-plots the course with quiet efficiency, as if nothing happen. Not "I told you so" Kathleen, as soon as we go off her course, she is forever banging on about recalculating, do a u-turn or turn this way or that. Sometimes we just have to turn her off for a bit of piece and quite while we wander.

So much for the how, now for the where. The Michelin Man marks scenic drives on his maps with a thick green strip beside the road. This is a very handy feature. On this afternoon we head south-east from Montignac (Lascaux) following the River Vezere to small village called Campagne then south until we hit the Dordonge at St Ciprien. From St Ciprien we travel east along the Dordonge until we arrive in the delightfully named town of La Rocque Gageac before heading north through Sarlat-de-Caneda, Montignac and home.

The River Vezere

By mid afternoon every carpark is full in any areas that could be remotely of interest to holiday makers. Even in the remotest locations, the place is full to overflowing. It was a good thing that we were just out for the drive with no real itenery or time constraints because all the tourist attactions were crowded and the traffic was crawling through the main towns.

The rivers are full of hire canoes and kayaks....

Paddlers in the Dordogne

and of course it wouldn't be France without cyclists...

The caves (natural and man made) in the limestone cliffs along the river valleys have provided housing and protection for humans for tens of thousands of years.

In the last 1000 years the building into the cliff face has become more sophisticated.

Then there are the towns called Bastides that have been built on top the cliffs for natural fortification. When combined with the caves and tunnels built into the cliff underneath, these towns have largely remained unconquered over the centuries of conflict.