Day 41, Sunday, October 8, 2023

it is our last day in Sarlat and we are going for a canoe ride on the Dordogne River.  It took bit of doing though.  The first company we drove to was closed for the season but they didn’t bother to put that on their website.  We see a sign on the road for another company, and it says that they are open.  We go there and yes, they are open, just not at this location.  We give up and decide to drive La Roque-Gageac and walk around the town. I notice another canoe company near the river and before we know it we are in a canoe on the Dordogne River.

It is a beautiful day, +28 C, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.  We pass houses built into the cliffs at Cénac-et-Saint-Julien.

The river is calm with just enough current to make paddling easy.

It is so peaceful and…

we see swans in several places along the river.There is the prettiest green seaweed and I see fish, Lots of fish, little ones and then some really big fish with whiskers…catfish? They particularly like hiding in the seaweed.  I keep showing them to Bob but he doesn’t see them.  I think he thought I was making up all these fish I was seeing until he took off his polarized sunglasses and then he can see the fish too.  He even gets to see one of the really big ones.  

We are having such a great time!

We pass three bridges and three villages with castles on our two and a half hour trip. This is the bridge at Vézac.

When we stop for our picnic lunch just before Vézac, these three sweet kids come down to the river bank to play.  I give them a plastic container to use as they are trying to build a dam on the side of the shore.  The little girl in the blue dress comes over and speaks very quickly to me and when I tell her I didn’t understand as I only speak a bit of French, her big brother comes over and very slowly and clearly tells me that it was very kind of me to give them the container and she was saying thank you.  When we  got back onto the river they waved to us and called out au revoir!

We pass ‘pirate’ tourist boats…

Beynac-et-Cazenac is another town built into the rock hillside…

and now we have passed Castelnaud-la-Chapelle.  We are nearing the end of our trip. But first we pass two of these strange half built bridges.  It doesn’t look like they plan on completing either of them although the bridge with a road bed is on both sides of the river and just has one section missing.  We wonder why.

Here is the last of the three bridges that we pass on our trip.  Our pickup point is a kilometre past this bridge.  We pull in and a short time later two vans come to pickup us and the canoes. We spent the time waiting for our pick up visiting with some people from Australia and Switzerland. We are so glad we were finally able to find a canoe rental company that was open for business.  Although I must say that both the employees we dealt with were rather rude and certainly not very pleasant.  This is the first time we have encountered anyone on this trip who wasn’t pleasant and helpful.  It didn’t matter though, we had a wonderful afternoon on the river.

When we arrived back in La Roque-Gageac Bob wants to explore the town but I am tired and sit in the shade at a little park while he goes exploring.  I draw a few of the people sitting around me while I am waiting.

I think it was a good thing I didn’t go with him as there was a lot of uphill walking.

Bob climbed up towards the troglodyte (cave dwelling) fort set in the cliffs 40 metres above La Roque-Gageac.  It is the remains of the 12th century fort that is still standing. The strong defensive position of La Roque-Gageac and this fortress meant that it held an important strategic and defensive position in the area.  Seems that there was an awful lot of fighting and defending one’s home way back then.Another view from the streets on Bob’s walk, and of the ‘pirate’ tourist ships.

On the way home we detour to visit Domme, another of France’s prettiest towns.  We hit detours and it took a bit to finally find it, but the view from this town was amazing.  We watched several hot air balloons flying high above the valley.  On was very very high, much higher than I we thought hot air balloons usually flew.  It was probably twice as high as this one! We bought some refreshing sorbet and just enjoyed the view before heading home to Sarlat to pack.  Tomorrow we are on our way to Carcassonne.