Le Franco Phoney

I’ve been meaning to write about a few final places from my summer road trip which simply can’t be missed, or that at least deserve some comment.

First of all, Lascaux II. If you’ve ever seen a prehistoric cave painting, chances are it’s from Lascaux. The cave was discovered when four boys and a dog found a hole in 1940 that led to a large underground cave, covered in artwork. The original cave is now closed to visitors because human traits such as breathing and body temperature were damaging the paintings, but a replica has been made using the same techniques as the original. I wonder if it too will suffer the same fate in years to come. Of course, photos, even without a flash, are not allowed, and since this was the start of our trip, we obeyed.

However, we then moved onto the Gouffre de Proumeyssac, where photos were also forbidden (just like in the Gouffre de Padirac). The slide show below has some photos from inside. Yes, by this point, the ‘no photos’ thing was boring, and we clicked away without a flash. This gouffre, or cave, features lots of squid-like staligtites and a very rare triangular rock formation which only occurs in the stillest of waters and with the right chemical conditions. Photos of that are also below.

Since we had already visited La Roque St Christophe and a few smaller rock-shelter villages, we only stopped at Les Eyzies de Tayac to take some photos of the giant man overlooking the town. He’s pictured in the photos below too. The museum does look good there, but we had no time to stop. We had a quick home-made icecream and drove away.

After a long, hot day, we picked a fantastic town to stay in overnight: Sarlat-la-Canéda. The town was full of activity well into the night, with street performers, an open-air theatre, all sorts of restaurants and really narrow, pretty alleyways in the largely pedestrianised town. Famous people have been born in asymmetric houses there, and the medieval feel of the place really adds to the relaxed atmosphere there.

Last, and for me, least, is Collonges la Rouge. This is a tourist town purely because all the buildings are made of red stones. For me, it wasn’t anything special, but my travelling companion loved it, so some photos appear below from that too. Don’t get me wrong, it was very pretty, but the whole ideology of a town being a tourist attraction because they happened to have a lot of red rock to use up makes me feel as if the inhabitants have really just cashed in on the population of non-colour-blind people. Minus points also for a less than tasty sandwich-based lunch with not much choice left at 2pm.

What’s a road trip around a European country if it doesn’t involve a castle? Chateau de Beynac can now be added to the long list of castles I’ve visited. The castle overlooks the Dordogne river, and its prime position has made it a popular castle to attack. The British declared it as British territory at one point, and Richard the Lionheart was rumoured to have climbed through the toilet holes to take the castle by storm. Most recently, the castle, in ruins, was (from memory) bought in the Seventies by a French man for around €30,000 (again, from memory). He was told he was crazy for buying a ruined castle and that land it sat on was more valuable. He started restoring it without commercialising it with tourist traps like gift shops: all entry fees went — and still go — towards the restoration of the castle.

Although the French man passed away in July 2008, the castle, now in great shape, is still being restored. Guided tours given by volunteers are free and a great way to see the castle. All the usual topics are covered: life in a castle, toilets in a castle, how to heat and light a castle, a kitchen in a castle, and defense mechanisms of a castle. One thing that I had not seen before was a table in the kitchen with a long hole at one end for the men to put their swords (see photo below). This was the only place where they could relax without fear of attack, and one of the few times they removed their swords from their bodies during the day.

If you visit this castle, remember these important bits of information:

1. They do charge for public parking on Sundays, despite what French travel partners say.
2. If you don’t want to do the fifteen-minute heart-starting (or stopping) walk to the castle from the road below, you can drive to the car park right outside it the castle entrance.

We discovered both these things the hard way.

One of the most amazing marriages between nature and humanity is la Roque Saint Christophe: Europe’s largest and oldest cave dwelling site. As uninteresting as a long, shallow dent in a rock sounds, la Roque Saint Christophe is actually really interesting. To help the imagination, a miniature version of part of the limestone village rests half way along the ‘main road’, just before the indented steeple of a long-gone church. The bell-tower allowed a series of similarly carved villages dotted along the Vézère river to warn each other of danger within minutes. The site has been restored in some areas and the entrance fee includes a booklet (in English if you want) explaining each of the different areas of interest, including an abattoir. Thankfully, that part of the village has not been restored.

[Show as slideshow]

Before I tell you about this place I visited, I have to tell you a few other things.

Firstly, my mum likes gardens. If I was to go on holiday with my mum, I would tell her that I don’t want to visit any gardens. Gardens are not my ‘thing’.

Secondly, I don’t see the point in quoting poetry. People might think it’s clever, but I don’t. It’s not original and it put me off liking a rather attractive French boy a few years ago when he thought he would quote Shakespeare in front of his French friends who all looked rather confused during his performance. You may think I am shallow for judging, and maybe I am.

So, where did I go? Well, in a completely hypocritical moment, I went to a garden called Marqueyssac which immediately led me to quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” to an equally confused French boy as we wandered around the sinuous rills of the fertile ground. This garden was made for Mr C’s poem! Although not quite ‘twice five miles of fertile ground’, there’s six kilometres of greenery full of nooks and crannies to visit: a tower; a playground; a lookout point which shows a village below with some buildings carved in the stone cliffs above it; lots of different walks; a water feature; an enormous length of hedge; interesting plants and trees abounding with wildlife; a chapel; and even a poet’s hut! Maybe Mr C wrote “Kubla Khan” at Marqueyssac after all. I did not, however, see any damsels with dulcimers, caves of ice or blokes who looked like they had been fed on honeydew and the milk of paradise, so maybe not.

Anyway, my mum will be pleased that I’ve visited a garden. Even I am pleased that I visited this one!

Le Gouffre de Padirac is possibly the most beautiful natural landmark I have ever seen. A gouffre (pronounced ‘goof-rrr’) is a cave, and this one is massive. Apart from stalictites and staligmites, the gouffre offers an underground boat ride at a constant 12°C. So, remember your jumper even on a hot day, and remember to laugh when the man steering your boat pretends to rock it a bit too much: if you were stuck underground in a damp cave for many hours each day, you’d want the tourists to humour you too.

The gouffre was formed over time naturally. It has something to do with acid rain, but the explanation was in French so I didn’t quite catch, well, any of it. What I did understand was that rainwater has since washed down some seeds, and there is now a tiny fern growing under one of the courtesy lights - the first plant life there. Looking at it is a bit look like looking at your friend’s baby scan: it’s tiny; it doesn’t seem real; but you’re still meant to say ‘wow’.

Of course, photography — even without a flash — is not allowed. So none of the photos below were actually taken, and none of the guides were tipped well for not noticing any blatant photography that was going on before, during and after the tour.

One thing to bare in mind before arriving is that this tourist attraction closes earlier than most others in France. It takes a good hour and a half to see everything, and perhaps a bit longer if you choose to mount the hundreds of stairs instead of using the three separate escalators to get back to the top. So, if you turn up at 6.03pm (like we did), the gates will be shut and the restaurant next to the gouffre that sells gauffres (waffles, pronouced ‘goff-rrr’) has probably run out of gauffres, making the early closure even more disappointing. We returned the next morning and the queue was massive, but fast. When we left just before midday, the queue had vanished and those arriving had the added benefit of cooling down during the hottest part of the day at the busiest time of summer. We did not stop for a gauffre. It was too hot and we had a red village to see.