An Historical Day

The castle in the cliffs

We set out early on Thursday to fit in a few of the sights in this region, most of which are in the south east area, about an hour and half drive.  We began the day at Le Maison Forte de Reignac, which is a castle built into the cliffs.  It dates back 20,000 years as the caves were first used as dwellings for prehistoric man, and has been added to over centuries.  There are exhibitions of everything from stone age tools, skulls from various ages, drawings carved into the cave walls, kitchens, bedrooms and drawing rooms from more recent times (13^th century) to the dungeon area dedicated to an exhibition of an array of terrible torture instruments (yuk!). Even Maciek was impressed. 



Sarlat



From there we went to the town of Sarlat.  It’s such a well preserved Medieval town that it really is like being on a movie set, even more so than Soest.  All the buildings are built of the local Perigord stone which is golden in colour, and it’s a labrynth of narrow cobbled streets and alleys winding through arch ways and small market squares.  It never seems to end, and I was fascinated!  I wanted to explore every nook and cranny and climb every step that had been smoothed out and worn down in the centre from centuries of footprints – but that’s just me!

One of the many little alleyways

Although we were tired, we carried on to another village called Baynac on the river.  It’s just like Sarlat, only on a much smaller scale, and there is canoe hire on the river which is why we went.  But we found out you have to catch a bus which takes you to various points along the river then paddle back to the start, and the shortest one would have taken 2.5 hours, and as  it was already 4.30pm, we thought it would be a bit silly!

I had a great day.  Unfortunately the kids don’t share my love of all things old.  We went into the Roman Museum on Tuesday, and Amelia was asking ‘what was this in the olden days, and what was that used for in the olden days?’ and then asked ‘Where did we live in the olden days?’ to which I replied ‘we didn’t live in the olden days, we live now’ to which she sighed, slumped and dragged her feet and exclaimed ‘well why are we bothering to look at things from the olden days then!’ to which Maciek replied, a bit on the sarcastic side for my liking, ‘because it’s interesting.’

Cheese!!

Old things - BRILLIANT!