The daily diary of a wandering restaurateur
May 10 - The Road to Dordogne
It was tough to say goodbye to Marie and Claude this morning. They have really been good
friends and warm hosts. We will be back ... and we will stay longer ... but the road
beckons. The rent on our cottage in Dordogne actually started on Saturday and the meter is
running. At one point we had thought about canceling on the Loire stop to spend more time
in the Dordogne, but if we had, we would have missed our adventure last night. What a loss
that would have been ... which all goes to show that you never can tell what lies ahead.
About an hour out of Averille we stopped at a trogolodyte village. While the name makes
them sound like fairy tale creatures who lived under bridges and ate small children, the
troglodytes were just otherwise ordinary people who chose to live in caves that they dug
in the soft limestone. Many of these communities flourished until the early 1900's. The
photos will give you a better picture of what it was like than any description I have time
to craft, so take a look.
The entire trip down here was less than six hours, mostly on two-lane roads behind the
occasional farm tractor. All in all a fairly painless journey. The Renault Laguna we have
rented is very smooth and comfortable with several rather civilized features that I will
probably document on a slow news day. We found our cottage in the little village of
Mauzac just as the owners, Mike and Jean Wragg from the UK were finishing the clean-up.
We are getting together with them on Tuesday night for a glass of wine so will have more
inside info on the area after that.
A quick trip to the town of Lalinde, about 6km away, to top off the diesel and make a
supermarket run, then 8km the other direction to the little town of Tremolat for dinner.
Tomorrow the plan is to do absolutely nothing ... and I am SO ready for that!
On the road to Dordogne
Pizza in Tremolat
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