Pre-history and a boat trip - Day 13

La Roque-Gageac, Domme

Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Bruce's foot was a lot better this morning - which was great but he was suffering from quite a bad headache. There are some very famous caves nearby called Font de Gaume and they contain cave paintings. You can see a similar thing as Lascaux II but that is a copy of Lascaux ( now closed to the public for conservation reasons) so we would have liked to see a font de Gaume. But how to get tickets! This seems to be the greatest mystery in France! They say yo can Pre book but when I e mailed them they said they have no more tickets for the year...so show up at 9.30 when the office opens and they sell just 40 tickets. We tried showing up mid morning just in case and with no luck and asked to book for the next day and that was not possible.
We thought we should have a look at the Pre-history museum in town but it was closing for lunch break (!) so we headed for La Roque Saint Christophe which we had driven by on the way to the dinosaur park and we'd commented on how striking it was. This rock area has been settled since earliest Pre- history right through to medieval times.
Here is some info from the website..
The enormous cliff by the name of Roque Saint-Christophe rears up over the Vézère Valley halfway between Les Eyzies and Montignac, in one of the Perigord’s finest landscapes. It is nothing short of a limestone wall half a mile long and 300 feet tall that has been incessantly undermined by the river and frost, hollowing it out to form a proliferation of rock shelters and long overhead terraces on striking overhangs. These natural Shelters were occupied by man in prehistoric times (55,000 years ago) then later altered and turned into a stronghold and citadel in the Middle Ages, as it remained up to the early Renaissance.
There are few troglodytic sites in the world that can rival the Roque Saint-Christophe in terms of age and surface area laid out, and it remains one of the most amazing attractions to visit in the Perigord.
They give you a great self guided tour pamphlet in English and we had a great time exploring and taking photos. They have done some great recreations of how things were particularly in medieval times.
We then headed back to la Rogue Gageac to take a boat ride on a gabare. The boat trip have a French commentary with an English audio guide which was great. Luckily the average age of most of the passengers seemed to be at least 60 and none interested in photos which meant when there were good photos to be had, only Bruce and I were fighting for good spots. We heard about how the Dordogne floods so much and how high...so all those houses at street level are only used for shops (and in the summer only). One flood some years ago had the cars in the Carpark at the same level as the Gabares. Also how the rock at la Roque Gageac holds the heat and creates a micro climate that means that the springs don't freeze in the summer.
We then headed 9 k's down the road to Domme which is a Bastide town which still retains some of it's fortified walls and gates. It is pretty high up and has amazing views. Most tourists park down the bottom and take a tourist train up but given it was around 5.00pm and low season - we drove up and got a really good Carpark. We had a wander through the town and enjoyed an icecream while admiring the view. The icecreams here are really lovely - less creamy than NZ and quite refreshing.
It was a great day. Unfortunately Bruce's headache had not improved so he headed for bed while Michael and I headed out for dinner for our last night in Les Eyzies. That was Menthalo a Portuguese run place quite close to where we were.

	Just before we entered the fortified gate [Map]		Looking down at the road. [Map]
	Michael in the church [Map]		medieval building equipment [Map]
	The grand staircase - no longer open to the public [Map]		Dining room [Map]
	A Gabare [Map]		One end of the boat trip. They can't go under the [Map]
	Kayakers in our wake [Map]		Coming back into the village [Map]
	castle..apparently you can rent this one.... [Map]		the Village [Map]

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