August 2011
In August the whole family spent three weeks in France. We took the car across the channel from Weymouth to St Malo in Brittany and stayed both in the beginning and towards the end of our journey one night just outside Cancale, "le capital d'huitre".
From Cancale we continued to southwest France, midi-Pyrenees, where we had chartered a traditional canal boat, a Peniche, and sailed on her for a week. We started in Moissac, northwest of Toulouse and did a tour on the river Tarn and then later a canal trip west to Valence d'Agen and then back again to Moissac and continued on the canal east via an aqueduct over the river to Montech and finally Montauban.
We brought our own bikes from England and did a lot of biking along the canal tow paths, which were easy to cycle along and often in shadow. As we had a couple of days with 38 degrees the shadow was very welcome. Easyvie, the canal boat, was managed by Tom, the Captain, and Brigitte, the cook, deck hand and stewardess, with considerable charm and panache.
As you can see from the photos, we saw lots of medieval towns, churches and abbeys. The most remarkable was l'Abbaye de Moissac from the 10th century with its cloister, which is one of the finest galleries of Romanesque art in the world.
After Montauban we left Easyvie and went to our rented gite in the medieval hamlet of Marnac, near St Cyprien in the Dordogne valley. On our way to Marnac we passed Bruniquel, which must be one of the most beautiful villages in France. It is on the pilgrim trail to Santiago de Compostela, like Auvillar, another village we visited earlier on our bicycles. Bruniquel prospered in the 12th to 14th centuries.
In Marnac we tried to live a "French family life" for a week with lots of foie gras, rosé wine, baguettes and croissants. The pool occupied Mikee and Eric for most of the time, but we visited several wonderful towns in its typical warm coloured stone that characterises Dordogne. We had great views over the Dordogne valley and our gite was situated next to the old church.
Mikee and I visited the Abbey of Cadouin, where a piece of the shroud that enveloped Jesus in the tomb was kept. Of course later research has shown that the piece of cloth is much younger than from Jesus time, but the story was enough to attract thousands of pilgrims to the place and made Cadouin very rich. The cloisters from the 15th and 16th centuries provide a magnificent example of flamboyant Gothic architecture and carvings. See the photos that Mikee and I took.
We went to the markets in Domme (medieval bastide town) and Sarlat (famous for its foie gras) and had lunch after wandering around the market.
After a week in Marnac we returned to Brittany and Cancale and took the ferry back to England.
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