The Lot in Lot - France!

Sunday 19^th – Showers and average 18 degrees

Today we woke up to our first bad weather day. It was raining all night but only overcast when we woke up with a very cool chill in the air, it was about  6-7 degrees. We planned to visit a few of the most beautiful villages today but due to the rain we had a few diversions which turned out to be even better.

Our first stop was St Cere where we stopped off to see what they had in their markets before going on to our first stop which was an 11^th Century village called Cardaillac. It is rated – as are another 4 villages we plan to visit – in France’s prettiest villages. It had an old castle where you could climb to the top of the tower to capture the view of the whole village. There were three towers within the forte and so many attractive old stone village houses.

From here we drove to Figeac to walk around the old town from 13^th to 14^th C. It was quite a large town but it poured rain so we had a change of plan. We heard about some fantastic caves called Gouffre De Pidirac which were not too far away. On the way we took some smaller streets and ended up having a coffee in a village called Rignac where we spoke to the French owner that had just moved there with his wife to get away for the big smoke! He spoke English well and was very informative.

To our surprise the caves were enormous! The is actually an underground river that flows for about 200 metres. You will have to search them on the internet to get images that we were not able to capture due to no photography as it could harm the environment.  The caves were not discovered until 1889 and they are 103 metres beneath the earth. The tour took about an hour and a half and it included lifts, many steps and a boat trip like a very large dingy being paddled along like gondolas with the guides giving a running commentary in French of course. We got an English brochure which I read to Gary under the led-light of my tiny torch which came with my money belt. It was so unbelievable with limestone stalagmites that were up to 96 metres in length. They grow at 2cm every century so we figures they were around 480,000 years old at the least! We were so taken by this tour and it only cost 9.80 Euro each for the whole tour.

On the way home as the rain had eased we went via another one of Lot’s most prettiest towns called Carannac which is right on the Dordogne River and it too was so pretty also dating back to the 11^th – 12^th Century. We visited a Romanesque Church and also a house that belonged to nobleman’s at the time who was a Dean that tutored the King Louis XIV’s grandson. We could actually walk around the whole house, it was fantastic. Well now we are home again and made a home cooked meal and I am drinking French red wine and Gary is sipping Queen Margot Traditional Cream Liqueur which only cost around 10 Euros in total from the local supermarket. So Salute and  A’ plus! (French for see you later) Love Chel and Gary xx

 Our first lunch stop arriving in the Lot district - Taking a well deserved driving rest!

 Gary loves this new hire car called Seat  Leon - Diesel - it so fast compard with the car in Portugal - Fiat Punto

Cardaillac village

 The tower we climbed

The typical houses with lovely roses and grape vines!

 The entry to the caves they go down from what you can see

 Carannac

 Gary in the Noble man's house

The Dordogne in the background of the old village