On a beautiful Saturday morning we walked the short distance to the town square for the weekly market. This was a huge event with eveything from clothing to veges to flowers to meat, cheese and fish. We went with purpose determined to buy picnic food as we do not want another salad or a hot meal for lunch. We bought bread, ham and cheese and our landlady contributed tomatoes from her garden.
Feeling prepared for the day we set off to visit villages to the SW of Brive. It took longer to leave town than usual as we discovered a large area of the city centre was closed to traffic for the market. Then even with the GPS finding the route via the one way streets when our lady in the machine didn't know some streets were temporarily closed was frustrating.
Eventually we were free to tackle the series of round abouts that sort traffic leaving/ entering the city. They really like their circles here.
Our first stop was typically unplanned. The bastion at Salignac just appeared in front of us as we were driving. A brief stop over and we were on our way to Sarlat. This is quite a large town and again the city centre was occupied by a market. The parking areas around there were chock a block and as we didn't need another market we drove on to La Roque Gegaeac. This was a very pretty town spread along the river edge. Next visit was Domme. This was a Knights Templar town with huge fortifications. After we walked up from the car park and through the city centre we found the stunning views from the riverside battlements. There are some nice hotels and restaurants around the edge but fortunately there is still some free space for travellers to enjoy the view.
From here to Beynac was moving along the valley to another defensive bastion perched on the cliff top. Parking was tricky here with limited space and we have only just discovered the need to keep a hoard of Euro coins for parking. Having used our resouces at Domme we were lucky that a nice man was offering his ticket with the remnant of his 3 hour payment. We had our picnic beside the river watching a fisherman and the tour boat completing its trip. The village was of necessity small as it was clustered in the gorge leading up to the cliff top so it didn't take long to explore.
On our way back to Brive we stopped at St Crepin al Carlucet where we found the beautiful manor house built between 15th and 17th C. The family chapel was adjacent and undergoing renovation. Also parked in front of the chapel was a 1960's Ferrari which held Bob drooling for quite a while. This area is also popular for walking tours and we came across a few groups of sweating tired walkers.
At home that evening we took another walking tour as we tried to find a restaurant that wasn't already booked out. Sat night is of course the night for dining out. We finally found one which was less popular and chose from the limited menu. The food seemed to have been prepared by an over ambitious chef who was voluble in the kitchen and as we noted later, inebrieted. However the food was edible and we don't seem to be suffering any after effects.
So ended our second last day here.
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