Day 7 Village Life in Dordogne

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Thursday, October 9, 2014

We were first to breakfast this morning just after 7am. It is raining this morning. We are very hopeful that it will not being raining at 11:30am when we have our boat ride on the Dordogne River. We had our usual breakfasts and the staff has altered over our stay and is much friendlier and more helpful and it is not such a problem to get coffee, milk or juice.

The bus left at 9am for Beynac. It raining with dark skies and lots of low clouds as we wound around and up and down from one valley to the next. It was still raining when we got off the bus outside Beynac castle. Adrian told us that the river parts of Chocolat were filmed here in Beynac. Besson's Joan of Arc was filmed here. Another thing we’ll have to revisit now when we’re home. Beynac castle was very impressive atop a cliff above the Dordogne River.

The Dordogne Valley has 5 castles and is where the 100 years wars took place with the English on one side of the river and the French on the other. Though honestly to hear Adrian explaining the Plantagenets and Capuchins, and the way everyone kept changing loyalties it was hard to say who was French and who was English. Anyway, this is where they battled it out. 

Beynac castle is privately owned. It has been in the same family since the 1950s and they are the ones who renovated it to its current state. Evidently there is only one 80-something year old woman left and she lives in the little gatehouse. It was an amazing visit and the views were spectacular even in the pouring rain. We all had to hole up in the kitchen for a while at the end of our visit to wait for the pouring rain to slack off some. Those of us who reached the top of the tower first could actually watch the black clouds of really heavy rain roll in. Eventually we had to leave even though it was still raining pretty good. 

We got down to the Garbarre landing on the Dordogne River early, but that was just as well because we needed a technical stop. At 11:30am as we set off the rain slacked off and we had a few minutes of sunshine before it started raining again. That was too bad because it is probably a beautiful little cruise. It is a very short cruise from Beynac around a bend in the river and under a railway bridge before you reach a very shallow fording place historically in front of a castle, Chateau de Feynac, owned by Texans with a car crushing machine invention fortune, from San Antonio.  According to our guides, the flowers blooming in the window boxes indicated that the owners were currently in residence. In the distance you could see Castelnaud. There we turned around and more or less drifted with the current back to the dock.  We saw fish jumping. We saw birds. We saw some different kinds of ducks and geese, either in the water or flying. Notably, we saw a couple of kingfishers, one diving! They were brilliantly colored blue and red but too quick to photograph. We saw quite a few gray herons.

The restaurant, Hostellerie de Maleville, where we ate lunch was right there at the garbarre landing. They were ready for us with a glassed-in room overlooking the Dordogne River. They served us at long tables in family style. They had water and red wine in bottles on the tables. They brought out platters of sliced, roasted veal with some onion gravy on it. They brought out platters of roasted potatoes and stuffed roasted tomatoes. There were wooden baskets of crusty whole wheat bread on the table. For dessert they gave everyone a slice of chocolate topped walnut cake with crème Anglaise. I would have liked some coffee but we waited and none came out. During lunch, while we waited for the cake I had already gone out to take some photos because the skies had cleared to blue with bright sunshine! When coffee didn’t come all the people at our end of our table went outside. After some time, someone came out and told us to go back in if we wanted coffee. I went back with several others and they served us tiny espressos. I needed the caffeine to get through the afternoon, as you might guess I did not eat veal or walnut cake!

At 2pm we departed for Domme. Our last stop of the tour. Although we could see it atop the cliff across the valley, we couldn't just go there. We kept driving further away from it as we had to approach it from the side without the cliff! Eventually, we wound our way far enough and high enough to park outside the medieval fortification walls. Domme is a bastide. That is a fortified, new town built maybe 700 to 800 years ago. There was a little road train waiting in the parking lot to take us to the top and into Domme. Adrian talked to us over the train’s speaker system and then for the first 10 minutes or so of our visit over our QuietVoxes. Then we had about half an hour of free time. There were only a few shops and restaurants, a church and the visitor’s bureau open. Mostly we appreciated the view and used the restrooms. Fortunately the rain seemed to have cleared out for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, I was already soaked all the way through from the boat ride.

We got back to the hotel between 4 and 5:30pm. We all said our good byes to Adrian who has been our primary local guide here in Dordogne. Clay had gotten us checked in for tomorrow’s BA flight while we were in the restaurant and parking lot as we left Beynac. We went straight to the 2 computer terminals near the dining room of the hotel as soon as we arrived. Even with the weird French keyboards Clay soon had our boarding passes printed. We should be fine to fly tomorrow morning. We are mostly packed and ready to go.

Dinner tonight is in the hotel at 7pm. We are expected to go to bed early. We all have wake up calls scheduled for 4:30am tomorrow. They are serving our normal breakfast buffet tomorrow at 5am! I think we all expected that with a 6am departure and a 3-hour bus ride that we would get another sack or box meal like we did on the way here. But, no an hour before departure we get a last regular meal. I guess that is toss up for which would be preferable. At 5:30am, at least one member of each party has to go out and identify our luggage before it can be loaded on the bus. Outbound we did this as we ourselves were boarding the bus, so I don’t know if this means we should be finished with breakfast, but I think so. I think we are expected to bring our bags and not go back upstairs after breakfast. I hope that works out OK. There are a lot of people in our group who are even less morning animals than me so we’ll see how this works. We are to depart at 6am sharp. We hope that happens because we have one of the earliest scheduled flights. Bordeaux is a very small airport and we are traveling with only carry-on luggage and we already have our boarding passes so we should be fine if we get there in 3 hours. If not, there are at least a half dozen other flights to London that day and we’ll assume that somehow we’ll get back. Fingers crossed that Plan A works.

Our last dinner was another catered meal in the hotel dining room. It was special. I had a mixed salad followed by an herb omelet with sauted zucchini and squash on the side and another salad with warm goat cheese followed by crème brulee and a plum liqueur. They also served red and white wines and tea and coffee. The regular menu was foie gras followed by sea scallops (that were evidently very fishy, they smelled) the goat cheese salad, etc.

We have an early morning here at the end. So, bonsoir et bonne nuit.


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