Sarlat to St Cirq-Lapopie

Sarlat and around

The apartment was very stylish, built into an old building almost in the centre of town. It had a spa and fitness room in the basement which we didn’t use and a circular staircase going up three floors. Luckily we were on the first floor, so only 20 stairs. I felt a bit sorry for the other residents as this had not been explained on the website. A kitchen and a bathroom with a washing machine, such luxury.

Unlike St Emillion which seems to be exclusively for tourists, Sarlat is a real working town with excellent markets, though the old centre still is rather touristy. There are just so many shops selling foie gras and canned duck, or restaurants with foie gras and duck gizzard salads and confit duck on the menu that a body can stand. We ate a lot of duck!

Shop with duck and geese products

In the end, after a rather bad meal at one restaurant early in the piece, we shopped at the covered market or the real market and bought our own vegetables, raspberries and fraises du bois and duck magrets, smoked magrets, lovely country terrines, gorgeous bread. Yum!

Sarlat window

Sarlat markets

Sarlat bronze geese

We had several excursions to the countryside. We visited the reproduction of Lascaux caves which is moulded from the original and has all the paintings exactly reproduced using original techniques. I expected it to be second rate but it was truly inspiring and we had a great English speaking guide. We ventured into several “Plus Belles Villages” even though it was wet, including St Armand de Coly which is dominated by a fortress church and remains a formidable bastion.

St Armand de Coly

Interior

Another was Domme, high on a ridge with pretty squares and charming side streets when you got away from the tourist shops. Rocamadour, that vertical village with town on one level, church in the rock next up and crowned by the chateau, was also an appealing place to spend a day, even in the wet.
 

Rocamadour

The troglodyte “chateau” of La Maison Forte de Reignac was also an experience, part original cave, part defensive house with only a front to defend. Lots of stairs and levels and views forever across the river and forests.

View from La Maison Forte
( Correction: View from the belvedere in Domme)

For a formal chateau it was hard to beat privately owned Hautefort with its exquisitely sculpted gardens and huge domed towers, while the tiny town of St Genies on the way had beautiful mellow stone buildings, a chateau restaurant which we did not visit, and roses covering every wall.

Hautefort

Hautefort dome interior

St Genies’ roses

We were fortunate to obtain a booking at La Recreation in the tiny town of Les Arques. This restaurant was documented charmingly in the book “From here you can’t see Paris” by Michael Sanders. The restaurant is housed in the old school house of the village and has old teaching posters interspersed with other pictures on the walls. The E32 menu with choices was delicious. First a creamy, buttery white asparagus soup served in a tureen at each table. I followed with lobster ravioli arranged like a flower with a smooth coral sauce poured over while Nick had St Jaques in katafi pastry with a passionfruit sauce. Given that he has conservative tastes and ate every scrap, I am assuming it was an acceptable combination of flavours. Nick had a steak with wine jus while I enjoyed a boned quail piled onto a galette spread with foie gras, the whole topped with a peppery and grapey jus. A cabecou of goat cheese with honey next, then desserts of choc fondant and a nougat glace with raspberry sauce. Well replete we headed home.

Interior La Recreation, Les Arques

The Sarlat market on Saturdays is big, very big. Because we could not park close to the apartment, we parked in a tree lined square just outside the old town. Came time to leave for our next stay and oops! This huge market had surrounded our car and we couldn’t get out. The signs were small advising of the market, but they were there. We paid a fine and killed time till about 4pm when the crowds had thinned and some market vans had left.

Cheese seller, Sarlat

Then the people with market sites nearby helped us to edge the car out and get on our way. Luckily not too far to go to St Cirq-Lapopie and a charming hotel made up of a series of village houses which had been remodelled. We had the tanners shop where he had cured leather in the back and sold it in the front window, now a lovely room with four poster bed, table and chairs and a modern bathroom. Most comfortable, with a lovely breakfast in front of the antique fireplace in the main building.

St Cirq street, our accommodation

St Cirq-Lapopie is another vertical village, crowned by a church and the ruins of a chateau, smothered with arches of roses everywhere, pretty little tourist shops and a scattering of restaurants. Not many places to stay at night so it tends to be visited by people on day trips. It is quite some hike up the hill to the village proper along cobbled streets past medieval houses and the ateliers of artists and artisans.

St Cirq

We had a sinful meal at the Gourmet Quercynoise, with variations on foie gras for me (deglazed duck liver, foie gras with flowers of salt and fig conserve, foie gras with truffles and carpaccio of foie gras) and another foie gras dish for Nick. We followed with a magret of duck with jus and truffles and a pork with honey and spices, finishing with pears poached in red wine with poire William sorbet. The decor of the restaurant was very much a country inn and quite delightful. I could kid myself that all the walking up and down hill assisted in working it off!

Interior Gourmet Quercynoise

Roses behind the church with view to river

The journey continues....

Pauillac to St Emillion to Sarlat la Caneda

We passed on breakfast at Cordeillan-Bages, though it looked lovely, set up in an open, stylishly decorated section of the hotel. A bit too much of a good thing! We settled for OJ from the fridge in the room.

Driving back on a lovely morning we stopped at one of Vauban’s forts, Fort Medoc. He was responsible for building these all around the edges of France for defence, and they were to become a recurring theme during our trip.

The powder magazine at Fort Medoc

Later we found the ruined Benedictine Abbey of La Sauve, with beautiful carvings on the capitals of columns and in a lovely setting. We spent some time there wandering on the daisy studded grass and photographing the stonework. I found myself getting a number of photos of Adam and Eve capitals in various churches this trip so that, too, became a theme.

Entry to St Emillion was confused, to say the least, by a recent change in the one way system of traffic. We ended up going through tiny roads squeezed between walls while I watched one side of the car “two inches clearance here” and Nick the other. How we did it without getting stuck between ancient houses is beyond me. The hotel was tiny, only a few rooms each floor, but blessedly had a lift. We looked out our back window at a little parcel of land growing grapes, no doubt appellation St Emillion.

We took the little white tourist train which we have often found to be most useful for orientation to a new town. We wended our way through vineyards, often premier Bordeaux growths, and I was surprised at how small some of the holdings are, sometimes only a few acres. Later, watching a video of the care of the vines we were startled to see the amount of hand tending required, often six or seven individual operations from pruning to tying to tilling the soil to spraying to culling the crop to eventual harvest. No wonder good wine costs so much. We then had fun choosing a few bottles of good wine in the Maison du Vin, a Moulin de Pierrefitte AC St Emilion and a Legerie Lussac-St Emillion. I am pleased to report that they tasted very good when we drank them later in Sarlat.

After lunch we toured the monolithic church of St Emillion which is underground and carved out of solid rock, built round the hermitage cave of St Emillion. The considerable knowledge of structure and ground water flows shown by the builders was later ignored, leading to build up of water and disintegration of the internal rock pillars which hold up the 380 tonne bell tower, so now they need to reinforce the underground pillars with steel corsets, not pretty but necessary.

Bell tower built over monolithic church

Heading towards Sarlat we stopped at Montcaret where a huge Roman villa has been partially uncovered. The church and village had been built over it, probably using some of the stones from the villa. Beautiful mosaics and the architectural plan visible in the excavations show a remarkable place. I don’t think they get many visitors; the custodians seemed very pleased to see us.

Part of mosaic floor

Adam and Eve, Montcaret church

Later we visited Monbazillac Chateau, a fairy tale chateau with towers and conical “hats” roses everywhere and a lovely view over the valleys and vineyards. The chateau was hosting the Morgan car club and they were all lined up across the front of the castle. Monbazillac is a beautiful, sweet dessert wine akin to Sauternes. We drank some of that with a meal in Sarlat too.

Chateau Monbazillac

Chateau, vines and roses

The weather began to close in here. Driving along the still flooded Dordogne River we came to Beynac castle towering above its village. Privately owned, like many castles in France, it is still being restored. A grim place, built by the English to fight the French just the other side of the river, and lit only by window light or oil torches, as it would have been originally. Great views so you could see the enemy approaching. It helped develop our understanding of what castle life might have been like, with everything herded into the castle walls in times of danger and very little light even during the day.

Beynac village and castle

We liked the idea of the privy hanging on the side of the tower. A bit of a worry about how well it might hold up...

On to Sarlat la Caneda, a lovely medieval town where we were booked to spend a week in an apartment.