Day 7 - Font de Gaume, Chateau de Commarque, old town Sarlat

We thought it would be fun to do some cycling in this area, so Mark had arranged with a man to rent some bikes while we are here.  He happens to be British, so language was not a problem and he brought the bikes this morning complete with maps of routes we might take and sights we might like to see.  The problem was the weather.  It has continued to rain, so we had to scrap the idea of riding today.

About 4 months ago, Mark made reservations for us at Font de Gaume.  It is the last cave in Europe with multicolored (3 colors) prehistoric cave paintings still opened to the public.

This cave only lets in 200 people a day because of the damage carbon dioxide does to the paintings.  These paintings have been dated and they are 15,000 years old.  Some also have parts of the painting etched into the rock.  The paintings are very light and I probably wouldn't have noticed them if the guide, with his laser pointer, hadn't pointed them out.  The lights they use in the cave are very dim, to protect the paintings I suppose.  Mostly the pictures we saw were of bison with a few reindeer and horses thrown in.  Here is David at the entrance of the cave:

This area seems to have a lot of very rocky terrain, but still lots of green woodsy areas.  Following our visit to the cave, we visited a chateau ruin recommended by our bicycle guy.  It isn't really on the tourist route, but we enjoyed Chateau de Commarque immensely.

We parked and then walked about 600 meters (David thought it was a longer walk than that, but that's what the sign said) down to the ruins.  Can I just say here that the forests are amazing?  The trees are SO close together.  It really illustrates the fact that you had to have a road or path through the forests in order to get through it.  It also illustrates that one could get lost in the forest very easily.

Emerging from the forest, we saw this:

Across the field you can see carved into the rock, holes that would have held the cross beams for the village that once existed next to the chateau.

I love walking around ruins and trying to imagine what it must have looked like in times gone by. It is amazing how they have integrated the rock into their structures.

 You can see where the steps must have gone up.

The neighboring chateau across the valley:

An arrow slit:

Mark on top of the highest lookout point:

In the evening we went into the medieval part of Sarlat.  It was a perfect time of day because there weren't very many people and it had stopped raining.

Town square:

David sits by the "boy of Sarlat" a bronze statue on the wall overlooking the square:

This region is noted for it's walnuts and fois gras.