We have certainly fallen in love with the little town of Le Bugue; it is wonderful! Had a very good dinner last night at the Royal Vezere Hotel in town (and used their internet access yet again…). We both had “menus” – R had salad with warm goat cheese followed by guinea hen with an asparagus soufflé and potatoes, with tart tatin (apple tart) for dessert. I had a composed salad with tomatoes, beets, shredded carrots and celeriac for starter, roast chicken and chips (French fries, for the non-Brits. And, need I say, they do make great French fries here. R) for main, and an amazing warm chocolate cake with a vanilla cream sauce for dessert; all washed down with a bottle of dry white wine from Bergerac. Yummy!
To bed by 10:30, although I did have to get up about 11:30 to take out wash #3 … and the last one for the day! (And in case you’re wondering, yes, I did yet another load today…VERY small machine…) Lovely, very quiet night, and we were glad of the electric heaters in each room, as it helped take the chill off of all that cold stone!
Up about 7:30 a.m. and down for breakfast. Made a nice meal out of the cheese, salami, ham and bread that we’d purchased at the hypermarche. R had some work to do, so I sat out on the patio with a book soaking up the sun while our latest round of drying soaked it up too! Around 9:30 a.m. we walked into town to find the market. R said: Where is it? My reply: Follow somebody with an empty basket! And voila, there it was, right in the center of town! Lovely market – we got some cheese, tomatoes and cherries as well as a wonderful farm chicken which had already been roasted (in the oven now) with potatoes. Also bought some haricots vert and some wonderful strawberries to finish up our meal tonight. We walked back home to put things away, then R picked up his computer and back into the center of town to the hotel for some email he needed to send.
I took this opportunity to walk around the town, and found it to be quite comprehensive for its size! There are several patisseries and three wonderful shops with gourmet products of the area – pate and the like. There is a kitchen/bathroom store, a barber shop, hair dressers, a total of three hotels, two hardware stores, several clothing shops, as well as a Chinese restaurant, an Italian restaurant, several take-away pizza places and two French restaurants (one of which I think we’re going to try tomorrow.)
Back to the house to put the laundry outside again (it’s on a rolling cart) and take a nap! (All the exhaustion of the morning…) Up again about 2:30 p.m. (obviously still trying to catch up from our wild and crazy time in Spain!) Decided to start with our cave exploration to see what we could see!
Less than half a mile away from the house is Grotte de Bara-Bahau, the cave of the bears. We were, literally, the ONLY people there, and got a really lovely tour in English by the lady in charge. Bara-Bahau is a private cave, and had previously existed as a bears den! There are claw/scratch marks all over the place! Bara-Bahau contains some wonderful engravings/petroglyphs of a bear (never saw one before!), bison, horses as well as aurochs. There was also a very interesting small museum.
From there, we headed to Grotte de Sorcier – the cave of the sorcerer. We have seen human hand imprints before (prehistoric painters would hold their hand up against the wall, and then blow paint from their mouth on their hand, thereby leaving an impression), but have NEVER seen an image of a human being before! It was amazing! (Oh, here we were 2 of 6 people on the tour.) More bison as well as horses; lovely, interesting and very unusual cave! (Sorry we can’t include some pictures of the wall art, but photography is prevented in the caves. If you’re interested, you could google the cave names and see what we saw today!) Robert did take pictures of the museum and the area around the cave itself – a house literally built right INTO the wall – evening the roof was made of large flat stones one on top of the other, all set at an angle, to help with rain run-off. Amazing!
As it was now 5 p.m. we thought we might be too late for Grotte de Rouffignac, but decided to try and see anyway. We were too late – but the drive there on the teeny, tiny back roads that Robert and Emmy (our GPS) found was just incredible! The entire area is covered with wildflowers. While down near Montpellier everything was covered with a brilliant yellow gorse, here we have lots and lots of brilliant red poppies everywhere! With the rolling countryside backing up against the rock faces of the cliffs, all decorated with flowers – it’s an incredible time of year to visit France!
From Rouffignac we headed back to Le Bugue, making a run to Intermarche for both gas (tomorrow is Sunday, and lots of places are closed in France!) as well as a few more staples for the house – Kleenex, paper towels, balsamic vinegar (tomato salad tomorrow night!) and parmesan cheese. Have chicken and potatoes in the oven as I write; waiting for beans to boil!
We are very much looking forward to tomorrow, as we are going to meet our friends Nathalie and Julia in Cordes-sur-ciel for lunch and some sightseeing! Nathalie and her family met friends of ours in the U.S. several years ago, and when Robert broke his leg and was in hospital in Nimes, Nathalie emailed me and very wonderfully volunteered to come to Nimes to help us with anything we needed! We were fortunately in good hands in Nimes, but it was such a generous offer of Nathalie to make. We have kept in touch, and now tomorrow will be meeting in person for the very first time! VERY much looking forward to that! Pictures tomorrow!
So, that’s all for the day – more tomorrow!
Much love,
m
x
PS - couldn't resist posting a picture of our incredible dinner! YUM!
m
x
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