B&B Brive-La-Gaillarde Ussac

This village clings to the side of a cliff. We first saw it in an articule in the TNT magazine in London.

It is another stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compestela. It has a famed image of a Black Madonna which is reputed to be responsible for many miracles.

From a distance this village is spectacular. We ...

Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne... Literally translates to beautiful place, which is the prefect description for this little village nestled on the Dordogne River. We found a fab parking spot for the night right on the rivers edge next to a cute little cottage with purple painted ...

Another pretty little village this time famous for its red brick houses. A little more life than the last few villages and even a few shops open, one of which specialised in foie gras. As this is foie gras territory we did as the locals do and bought ourselves some which we will enjoy one night with one of the remaining bottle of champagne we still have in Scooby.

Gorgeous!!! Not a soul insight as we had arrived at lunchtime and we only met 2 other tourists, on deptarture - a retired English couple who had seen us in Blois - they recognised Scooby :) Rolling fog and mist coming up the valley started to clear and revealed a valley full of autumn colours. We made our way to the Waterfalls and then followed the riverside walk before heading back to Scooby to have lunch and further appreciate the view.

Set upon the River Vezere and quite pretty due to its 15th and 16th century Maisons a Tourelles, which looks like miniture castles due to their turrets. The rain had stopped for our little walk around the village but started again when we got back to the car - great timing!

We left the bordeaux region today for the dordogne valley - the ancient town of Sarlat - waaaay medieval-
I've determined that there is not enough of france to walk in to justify the amount of food we've been eating...oof. We havent even had any pastries or creme brulee we're so full from lunch and dinner!
we"ll post more in the matin!
Bonne Nuit!

... lived in Paris for many, many years, but decided that small-town Sarlat was more his lifestyle.

The canoe rental cost 17 euros, and it turned out to be money very well spent. The beauty of the Dordogne is that it's very easy to stop anywhere you like for a photo, a break, or a splash in the river. After a few hours, I was WAY behind schedule, in terms of how long the guidebook says this trip should take, but you don't abide by any schedule when you are ...

... see blog entry entitled "A mix of Disney, baguette, fromage, and *****!" http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-en tries/pwong/europe_2006/1153739220/tpod .html )

Two local couples, or perhaps French tourists, sitting next to me nodded in approval when it was delivered to my table. Their words and gestures seemed to indicate "Good choice, this is very French!" ... but then they nearly freaked out when I poured way too much water into it "NON!!! C'est ...

So back to my travel pod, which I have been very slack keeping up this year which is a bit ironic as I have hardly been in country, spending too much time out travelling. Today I am updating with my wonderful French cooking course followed by pub crawling around the UK in a very sexy Aston Martin, which wasn't actually the plan but as there seems to be a pub on every corner that ...

... he need to go hunting one day, harvest and store his potatoes for the winter and constantly disappearing to feed his pigs and rabbits - these are handy, he told us, when you have unexpected visitors for lunch. Un, deux, trois and the rabbit is reading for eating (you can imagine his explanatory hand gestures). Each night after work, at approximately 7pm, we opened a bottle of wine and admired the day's work. It often felt as if we were admiring the same work as the day ...