Road trip #2

Bonjour

Last blog post, we mentioned we were off to Sarlat, a place we knew very little about. It is a medieval town in the Dordogne region and extremely pretty in a picture postcard way. Despite our ordinary photography skills on our phones and the glare from the 36 degree days, we managed a few which show how lovely it is.

We also took a bit of a drive to the outskirts to visit the gardens of Eyrignac. In 10 hectares there are 300 sculpted plants that are hand clipped by six full time gardeners. The same family has owned the property for 500 years and in normal years they host plenty of weddings and parties.

Not many flowers and the only ones we saw were white. Everything is done by hand, all the trimming, edging, raking leaves….. a lot of work.

Next stop was Roquefort. Cheese that smells like dirty socks is a bit divisive, but we like it, so could not pass by without a tour of the Roquefort cheese caves. The tour was entirely in French, but we gathered that it is made from milk from a very particular type of sheep which is sprinkled with powdered mould and left to do its magic in the caves which are at a constant temperature of 10 degrees.

Wheels of cheese getting mouldy. There was no smell but at 10 degrees, it felt like being in a fridge so probably to be expected.

We continued east and stopped at the Pont du Gard, a bridge built in the first century to bring running water to nearby town of Nimes for 500 years. It is the world’s tallest Roman bridge and took only 5 years to build.

The top level is the aqueduct canal where the water used to travel for 50kms by gravity alone. The water was used in Nimes to supply the fountains and thermal baths. The lower level was added much later in 1747 and the only level the public can walk on now.

Houses don’t come any older than this. In the shadows of the bridge is the prehistoric Saltpeter Cave, dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic period 19000 years ago. Inside there is 6 metres of levels of inhabitants stacked on top of one another.

And now we are bunkered down in Hyéres, overlooking the Mediterranean. It’s hot, sunny and even has brief but intense thunder storms. Just like Brisbane. We are right near a marina with literally thousands of boats that look like they never go anywhere, and many are for sale. The beaches are lovely (some anyway) and on Sunday the water was busy with many kite surfers, but apart from that most people just use the water to get wet. Not a lot of swimming and lots of standing around or chatting.