After the unhappy history of D'Ordadour sur Glane, it was nice to get down to the Dordogne valley and see some of the old castles from the 100 year war with the English and French (Richard the Lion Hearted and all of that). I had never heard of the Dordogne until reading a Michael Critchon fiction book about time travel a few years ago where these guys were going back in time as part of setting up a tourist attraction where people could go back to see what these castles really looked like way back then. It was quite good and certainly dealt with life back then (not a lot of sci-fi in it... more of what it was like back then and how modern people are ill suited to survive even a few minutes of that time period).
ANYWAY, back to the valley. We started out at Les Eyres which is the site of many of the caves where prehistoric man cave paintings come from 17-35,000 years ago! Our first cave was Lascaux II. It's called II because they made an exact replica of the original as it was getting heavily damaged by all the tourist traffic so they closed it. They still didn't want us taking pictures of them so you'll have to use your imagination but it was quite amazing to see the technique... especially after seeing the MUCH more crude pictures made much more recently by the San in Namibia. Here's a link from some web pictures to give you an idea.
They also had a museum built into the side of an old cave that detailed all the stone tools and skeletons they found. It was quite interesting.
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| A view from the cave at the museum looking over Les Eryes. That river was moving at least 6 knots. |
After that, it was down to Beynac to see the two famous castles where it all happened. You could literally step back in time... it was very enlightening.
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| The beginnings of my camera focus issues... later that day, we lost it entirely. That's Beynac up on the hill. |
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| I loved these stone shingles! |
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| Looking across the river to Castlenaud (the second one) |
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| Trying out their potty... drops 500' to the town below |
After Beynac, it was over to the other one, Castlenaud.
And then the camera died.... no pictures for a bit.
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