Hotel L'Ecrin Bourg-Murat

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. <br>

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!<br>

Our stop-over in Brive was a little interesting...some old bum woman saw that Paul and I were eating left overs, and she kept bugging Paul for him to give her some...Paul was a bit tired and wasn't really interested in being polite...and told her to...**** off! oh Paul, what a classy way to deal with bums!

We left the west coast and headed inland to look for work. We stopped at Angouleme for lunch which had a spectacular view from the old city. We carried on into the Dordogne, and looking for a campsite came across a municipal site in a little town called Argentat-sur-Dordogne. The weather was stifling hot, which that night brought on 24 hours of massive thunderstorms and then 3 days of rain! The Dordogne was flooding and even Argentat lost electricity one night!

alright, our first rest day. I apologize to anyone who finds a typo in my writing first of all. the french use a different keyboard layout and i'm not very adjustable apparently. So where to start? so far our trip has been wonderful, and having a day of rest only amplifies our feeling. today, while resting, we've managed to meet with a friar of the local cathedral and monastery dedicated to saint ...

... tables and chairs in the middle of the town square, fed everyone mussels and chips, and then had a Dj playing music till late in the night. It had a bit of a wedding feel to it in that all the grans and granpas were out there shaking a leg too. And now I'm on my way to San Sebastian, Spain. I missed my first train despite the fact that I was standing on the platform at the time. If I was superstitious I would consider that a bad omen. Bring on Espana.

On the 20th of July Simba and I left Cambridge to visit Dechen Choling - the Shambhala Land Center in France. I was going to study Kyudo for a week (explanation in earlier entry) and she was going to do childcare for family camp. On the first day we settled into our lovely tent at the bottom of the lawn in front of the chateau. The advance Kyudo course was going on and as we walked past Simba said ...

Stayed at a campsite in the Dordogne which is the best I have ever seen and based around a large chateau with a Lake. The Dordogne is pretty and we used the time to just relax a bit and treat it like a holiday. On route to le Verdoyer the roads were so straight that you could travel without a bend for over 5 mins. I wished I had a Porsche not a Nissan.

... t recognize the station. I also couldn't get the number for the retreat center from anyone. I don't know why I didn't write these things down when I was back in England. I took a walk to the nearest internet cafe, which very kindly let me get the number for Dechen Choling without charge and when I got back to the station there was another participant who also ...

Heading to the Wine region, we made a stop at Fontainbleau. The country is so lush and green with lots of canola fields which are buttercup yellow. The town itself is very quaint. The Chateau itself is on 62,000 acres of gardens and rivers. Checked out the local market where unfortunately following my nose found me sniffing smelly cheese and another ghastly smell....herbed horse! We are staying in the Chateau de Cruix, which is ...