A couple of days in the Perigord

Out next stop on "da Road Trip" was Perigord. It's a region of France we visited a couple of years ago, and at the time we told ourselves: "we've got to come back to this amazingly beautiful part of France", so 'bout time for a second visit I'd say...

Perigord really is the culmination of what's beautiful about the French countryside: beautiful, rolling hills, medieval villages with stone houses that look like they haven't changed for a century, picturesque farmhouses, imposing castles, and a rather characteristic regional cuisine (think duck - foie gras, magret de canard, confit de canard - it really is all about duck here!). We were staying in a pretty little village called Coux-et-Bigaroque, at one of those French country houses I was talking about earlier, called le Chambellan, located just next to the village church.

Having settled in, it was time to prepare for the critical activity called dinner. We decided to dine in Sarlat-la-Canéda - a stunningly beautiful medieval town we really adored during our last visit in the Perigord. We were happy to get a table at the nr. 2 restaurant at Sarlat! Sarlat was certainly as pretty as we remembered - with its cobble-stoned streets and cozy little stone houses - amazing for a town of that size to have managed to keep it's medieval architecture so intact. 

The restaurant was nothing to write home about - I was quite surprised about the high tripadvisor rating. It was all about duck, which I'm more than fine with, but their cuisine just lacked, I don't know, that little bit of extra you would expect from one of the best restaurants in town (if Tripadvisor is a good measure for that sort of thing, that is...). But we were still happy to reacquaint ourselves with this beautiful little town.

The next day, we decided to get sporty and go on a hike. It was all a bit improvised, as we didn't even have a map (we just picked a foot trail at an information billboard in the village centre. To make matters worse, some menacing clouds appeared in the sky, so in the end we decided to abort the hike after about an hour or so and head back to the village. 

Since the skies cleared up again, we decided to head down to the nearby Dordogne river for a swim. Great fun and pretty sporty too - not easy swimming against the current of a river (we were rather grateful for the nets which protected us from being swept downriver!). 

In the afternoon, we decided to do a bit of a roadtrip. Our first stop was Belvès, another stunning medieval town, where there was actually a fete medieval going on today (hence the tourist hordes...). After a bite and a walk around the atmospheric cobble-stone streets, and checking out the street entertainers, we carried on our mini-road trip.

The next stop was Montpazier - which is apparently "the ideal bastide". So, obviously, we had to check out the local attraction, which was the bastide museum, which does a pretty good job at describing what bastides are all about. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, bastides are highly regimented & planned towns that were created during the 13th and 14th centuries, as an attempt by the king to control the unruly south west of France. The bastides were built in a strict grid pattern, each house having exactly the same dimensions. Kind of egaliterian, really. It's true that Montpazier showcases this grid pattern very well. Interesting place. 

Our next stop was Beaumont-du-Périgord, another stunning example of a bastide. It was perhaps less harmonious than Montpazier, but I think I preferred it since the place was just as picturesque, but considerably less touristy. The main square was particularly enchanting, dominated by its fortified church.

We wound up our road trip with a quick stop at Cadouin, another pretty medieval village, known for its Cistercian Abbey. It is, apparently, a rather important religious institution, so much in fact that it's a UNESCO world heritage site. Unfortunately we didn't have time to visit the place, we contented ourselves with admiring it from afar, from a panoramic viewpoint a bit up the valley overlooking the village. We finished a rather tirking but most rewarding  day with yet another duck-themed dinner at our hotel.

The next day, it was unfortunately time to check out of our hotel, and continue our trip towards La Rochelle. Kind of sad to leave the idyllic countryside behind us, and be greeted by supermarkets, traffic lights and other signs of "civilization"... We decided to stop and have a walk around Perigeux, it is after all the captital of Perigord. It's quite a nice little provincial town, dominated by its impressive cathedral (which is quite atypical for France - it looks almost greek in style, a bit like Saint-Marc's in Venice). After a quick visit of the impressive cathedral and a walk around the old town, we jumped back in the car and carried on towards La Rochelle.