Twenty-first of May was ascension day- a holiday in France, not to mention our wedding anniversary, so we went for drive into the outer edges of Dordogneshire.
True, we live in the upper Dordogne valley but we consider ourselves, literally, a cut above the immigrant Brits who inhabit the lower Dordogne, from Souillac, through Bergerac, westwards to the Gironde. All nonsense of course, but we do feel slightly smug about it. We have more room here; we're more thinly spread, our terrain is more rufty-tufty, we know how to tough- out our more severe winter cold snaps, our summers are more, well, clement- and so on. As a softy-Brit Southerner (raised in the Bournemouth area- never seen a decent blizzard), I'm ashamed to say I've come across this before of course but in reverse, in our former life in the UK, from our friends in the north whom we used to think crass for using these arguments to somehow prove their superiority.
Ah well, human nature and all that.....We visited Sarlat and Domme- wonderful towns in inimmitable surroundings. Sarlat is a truly medieaval survivor, built from soft Dordogne limestone. The town has a unique charm and intimacy, despite the crowds there on that feast-day having a jolly time in the streets under warm, spring sunshine. We had a coffee outside the Town Hall in a lively street in the town's centre, entertained by a wandering sort-of-trad-jazz band who blasted their repertoire over the heads of the throng against the background commentary of the day's master-of-ceremonies - a man somewhere nearby with a microphone linked to the speaker system in the streets. He spent the whole time we were there talking about ducks; how to feed them in preparation for the subsequent culinary delight of killing them, plucking them, 'emptying' them (literal English translation for the French for 'disembowel'), cutting them up and then the recipes. Finally he came to the famous foie-gras explanations and our favourite potato dish, Pommes Sarladaise, named after the town (potatoes cooked in duck-fat).
Domme is not far away. Stick to this link to find out about this village - as some of you, I'm almost sure, would know that the word has another meaning... (click here if your curiosity compels you).
I've been pretty slow on the blog-front in the last couple of months, I know. Summer's here and the warm, dry weather has brought other attractions and time-fillers. We've had our euro-election too, since the last blog and we voted for the first time in France. Fascinating. Favoured candidate paper flyer is sealed in a plain brown envelope and dropped into a totally transparent ballot box, manned by a smiling man who operates the shutter on the posting slot. He was pretty quick - get your fingers out of the way,- smartish. My man didn't do too well, but hey, vive l' europe!
Mapmaker
Posts
