Doing Dordogne - Day 8

Tuesday, September 13th

      We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast this morning. Just a little way up the street I found a tabac that offered cafe-creme and a croissant. Jane went across the street to a patisserie to get a croissant and a small orange juice, then joined me on the terrace in the bright sunshine that had rapidly dissipated the early morning fog.

      We set off up the very steep cobbled lane that we had followed on Sunday, stopping several times to rest and marvel at the vistas across the Dordogne Valley. We finally approached the Chateau de Beynac, and bought admission tickets.

      As we wandered past walls within walls and gates beyond gates, and crossed a drawbridge over a 20 foot deep pit whose bottom was covered with sharpened wooden spikes we were impressed with the attention to security.  

        As early as the 16th century they even had the capability of conducting chemical warfare. Above two inner gates there were protected wooden extensions out from the stone walls to allow defenders to dump buckets of caustic lye on attackers trying to breach the inner defenses..

     The oldest part of the fortress was the castle keep, a five story tall tower. Whoever was occupying the chateau could retreat here behind all the layers of defense, and pull up the ladders through a narrow trap door, making it very difficult to reach. The English King Richard the Lionheart used the castle keep as his residence for several years after capturing Chateau de Beynac.

      The Dordogne River marked the approximate political boundary between the English and the French during the Hundred Years War, and Chateau de Beynac in spite of its impressive layered defenses had been captured and changed possession back and forth between the English and the French nine different times over the years.

      We explored the various levels of the chateau, including the quarters for the soldiers, the spiral staircases, the huge kitchen, the baronial living quarters, and on up to the topmost ramparts. From there it was a dizzying vertical view to the village and river far, far below.

      We stopped for lunch at the restaurant "Les Ramparts de Chateau" before heading partway back down the same steep lane we had ascended earlier. We came to an overlook where the path split, and taking the left branch we descended to the old port of Beynac on the riverside, and then walked back to the hotel along a welcome flat path along the edge of the river.

      Late in the afternoon we met Bill and Miriam to walk down to the riverside dock across the street from the hotel, where we boarded a "gabarre", a replica of a river boat used here in the 1800's (with the exception that this one was powered by two large, quiet, but powerful Yamaha outboard engines.) The boat, filled to about half its 50 passenger capacity, moved almost silently upstream from Beynac past the port toward the castle of Castelnaud on a fifty minute trip that also provided beautiful views of the castles of Fayrac and Marqueyssac before reaching a shallow part of the river and turning back again.

      We turned our evening meal around backwards, eating ice cream and sipping peach wine at a riverside bistro before hopping in the car for a short ride to "Auberge des Chateaux", where all four of us dined on omelets and shared a carafe of nice local red wine.

     Our last experience of the evening was seeing Chateau de Beynac silhouetted against a fading orange western sky as a full moon rose above a wooded ridge in the east.

Doing Dordogne - Day Six

Sunday, September 11th

      We woke to the sound of church bells. Oh yeah, it's Sunday! They faded away, but came back a half hour later as if to say, "Yes, we know you went back to sleep and ignored us the first time, but now we're going to continue this melodious clamor until you get up and get ready to observe Sunday properly!"

      We decided to skip breakfast. We joined Bill and Miriam in the car, and headed down along the banks of the Dordogne River about 10 km to the town of St. Cyprian where we had heard there was a Sunday market.

      We found a parking place at the edge of the town center. The main street was blocked off to vehicular traffic, but there were hundreds and hundreds of people crowded shoulder to shoulder, ambling along congenially, perusing the amazing variety of goods in the vending stalls that were stretched side by side for perhaps a half mile along both sides of the street.

      There were Nigerian vendors selling cloth purses, leather belts, incense, key chain charms and hats. There were vendors selling 23 different kinds of olives. There were booths where you could buy ten or twelve kinds of bread, or 15 different kinds of pastry, and others that offered a dozen or more kinds of cheese. We each bought a large cinnamon-raisin roll to eat while strolling.

There were table cloths and meat and fish and baskets and fruit. There were bottles of wine and mounds of exotic spices and shoes and scarves and sweaters.

      There were onion sets and fresh carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, beans, corn, and watermelon. There were bananas and peaches and apples and plums strawberries and pomegranates and kiwi.

There were buskers playing guitars and sitars and Peruvian quenas and flutes. There were baskets of flowers, a tinkling fountain, and huge curved pans of paella, and loungers sipping espresso at sidewalk cafes. The market was filled with sounds and smells and sensation. What an amazing morning!

      Heading back toward the east, we turned away from the Dordogne River just before reaching Beynac on a one-lane road that wound up through dense woods that formed a leafy green tunnel, emerging high on the open bluffs that overlook the river. We cautiously navigated the narrow lanes that constituted the main streets of the tiny village of Cazenac, then back down again by an alternate route that brought us to Beynac. We took the single street straight up the hill through the town, through woods again, and up to grassy meadows. 

     Doubling back toward the river, the road ended at the Chateau de Beynac, a forbidding-looking fortified castle at the edge of the cliff overlooking the town and the river far below. It looks impregnable, but in 1199 AD Richard the Lionheart of England captured it by sending his men to scale the 600 foot cliff walls at a spot no one had thought to defend.

     We found a nice little cafe just outside the castle keep, with an open terrace where we enjoyed lunch before heading back down to the hotel for a much needed nap.

      Feeling refreshed, Jane and I ventured out in the late afternoon to explore the steep, narrow cobblestone streets of Beynac that wend their way upward so sharply that it seems at times as if you would be in danger of sliding back down were it not for the small, rough stones used for paving. Eventually we found ourselves back at the Chateau de Beynac, and spent some time exploring the portcullis gate and the ramparts before heading back again down paths and streets not quite so steep as those we had climbed.

     Later we found a small open air bistro overlooking the river. The sun dipped below the gray clouds that had been hovering overhead all day, turning the edges delicate shades of pink that almost matched the color of the vin rose we sipped while dined on delicious, moist fluffy omelets.