The Dordogne Region

Town Centre

Sarlat, known for Fois Gras

It’s amazing what you can learn from a book. I like Michael Crichton as an author, a Dr. by training he turned to writing and generally wrote technical sci-fi type fictional books, the best known were the Jurassic Park series. He would extend the realm of possibility by making a technical advancement available, like in Jurassic Park that we could extract DNA from the age of dinosaurs and clone it and remake them adding the missing chromosomes.

So what has that got to do with France you ask?
Well one of his later novels was called Timeline, an account of a company that was restoring ruins in the Dordogne region, only it had an inside edge, it was able to travel back in time and see the ruins when they were still in use during the 100 years war. The book was so interesting that I was able to picture the area. Later when Rick Steve’s ‘discovered it’ as he claims, I recognized the regions just by the word pictures from the book. Crichton was quite the author!!

Ancient Dwellings

So we targeted the Dordogne area, specifically Sarlat le Caneda since it was central to the area. When we arrived we just got off the bike and went WOW to each other. The last 50 kms in from Brive, France was so beautiful we couldn’t believe it. Then we walked the town of Sarlat, known for it’s Fois Gras or force fed Duck and Geese livers that are turned into a delicacy. They are an acquired taste and we tasted some of the best stuff at the Wednesday market and it is nice but.....

La Roque Gageac

Our hotel here is Les Remparts  a good hotel very centrally located to everything and reasonably priced. After orienting ourselves we set out to see the sites and enjoy a nice meal. We found L’Instant Delice, a gourmet restaurant with a Menu that included a duck green salad, roast duck leg with potatoes, and a chocolate cake dessert. Sandra had the same salad but a duck casserole and creme brule. What a mel, pure gourmet French cooking and at $20.00/ person it was fantastic!!
Today we set out to see the sights, including La Roque Gageac, Beynac and Castlenaud ( the centre of the Timeline novel) and La Roque de Christophe (LRC), a 50,000 BC prehistoric settlement.
This site (LRC) coupled with Goreme and Mesa Verde in Colorado form the trio of man’s prehistoric cliff dwelling sites in the world, and now we have seen them all!
And touring this area with the HD helmet cam on has yielded some incredible footage that we will turn into a great capsule of France.

Beynac from the Road

Beynac from the Viewpoint

La Roque Christophe Overview

Ancient 50000 yr old steps

A bit about Neanderthal Man, No not me!

Activities at the Cave, I remember when!