Bergerac

Have you ever seen the movie Roxanne with Steve Martin? He plays a fire chief with an unusually long nose. Well, his character is based off a real person named Savinien de Cyrano who never went to the town of Bergerac but was born in Paris and was a military hero. Legend has it, that the author Edmond Rostand, who wrote the romantic comedy Cyrano de Bergerac, was inspired by Cyrano’s love letters in 1897. If you don’t know the story then watch the movie and you will learn the story of Cyrano (sort of), it’s funny too so it’s worth it; although, Julie would recommend reading the book. Bergerac is also famous for its wine region (it is near the Bordeaux region) and its tobacco farms. Julie wasn’t feeling too good when we arrived at the free camping spot so we hung out for a bit before heading into town. The town itself wasn’t all that spectacular, so when we acquired the town map and located the statue of Cyrano, we made our way back to the van and called it a day.

Cahors

It was an early start for us this morning, mainly due to the cold. Lately it has been around 3 degrees over night and in the early the morning as well. Our goal to get south for warmer weather is still our #1 priority, so after a quick bite we drove back to the pay spot from the previous night and headed out for the tourist office. We asked for a good place to get their famous wine and received another town map. The wine house that the lady at the tourist office recommended was just around the corner from where we were and extremely easy to find. We purchased our one bottle of wine (6euros and the most we have spent on wine) and went to a convenience store to buy another phone card. The town of Cahors is almost completely surrounded by the Lot River. They have many bridges, one of which is the largest fortified bridge in Europe. For some reason, the Devil played a part in building this bridge. To acknowledge this story, the architect added a sculpture on one of the towers during the restoration process a few years ago.

We took some pictures and took off for Bergerac. But that is when things got weird. An air-raid siren went off, now this isn’t the first time we have heard it since being in Europe so we thought nothing of it. A communication error and we ended up taking the wrong exit in a roundabout. Now, I was driving, but I could have sworn I saw a guy with a machine gun in army fatigues. Like I said, I was driving so I shrugged it off. The next bend in the road revealed about 5 tanks and a few other military vehicles (around 20) and many troops with machine guns. One guy was controlling traffic and had stopped us. While we were waiting in this scene, we saw a few of the army guys climbing up onto a building near by. We are not sure what was going on, it might have even been a drill, but it was pretty crazy.

Rocamadour/Cahors

Nothing ever goes to plan, which is why we never wanted to make any in the first place. So, we got ready to go slowly and left later than planned. Today is my mom’s birthday so we are going to try to call home again. The phone card we purchased in Amsterdam when we arrived is supposed to work in all countries in the EU. We have not had any problems with it until now. Julie tells me that during her conversations with the phone card company, they mentioned that France is especially hard to call from with their card. We tried using the phone card at least 20 times since our arrival in France without any success. So, I regrettably could not call home. Sorry mom. Once we were off to Rocamadour it was clear sailing and nothing really exciting, except that we are now driving on extremely narrow roads again. We approached Rocamadour from the top of a cliff and had a spectacular view of the town built along the valley wall. We took the winding road down to the parking area then had to walk part way up. It was really amazing seeing the town built the way it was. It was narrow and hugging the cliff as though it was afraid of the valley itself. Back in the day, priests used to walk up the steps praying at each one on their way up to the castle. It was also tradition, that when anyone important came the people in the castle met them half way up the steps. It was a brief stop, then another long drive to Cahors. Along the way we spotted a deer in a farmer’s field but our camera wasn’t fast enough to catch Bambi. We arrived in Cahors when it was dark, so it made driving simple without any traffic. The free camp place was full when we arrived so we drove around a bit before pulling in front of the River in a pay parking spot. We didn’t pay but used the free internet connection to send an email to my mom. We didn’t know there would be internet here, but we tried anyway, we originally pulled in here to figure out where we were going to go. The campsite we know of is closed for the season (something we are running into a lot lately) and had no area for us to park. We had passed a parking lot that some trucks and cars were parked in so we decided that would be as good a place as any. Tomorrow it’s off to try some dark wine and head to Begerac – which seems to be popular for tobacco….. we hope there is more to see there than that.

Dordogne Valley – Perigueux

We drove a total of 861km today, first driving around 300km to La Rochelle, and the remainder to Perigueux. The city of Perigueux has a market every Saturday, has free parking for camper vans, and a campground that is relatively cheap. This is why we chose to drive the insane amount of km’s to this city, that and we want to enter Spain before the end of November. We woke early that Saturday morning in hopes to visit the Speedy we had passed the night before and to visit the Saturday Market, but when we read up on the market to find out where it was in the city, we learnt that there was relatively no info on it. There was however, another city about 65 km south of Perigueux, Sarlat-la-Caneda that has a market every Saturday as well and happens to be the most famous in all France. That being said, we drove the 65 km to Sarlat and visited the market before it closed at 1pm. The market was extremely huge and we could see why it was such a draw. Despite this, we did not purchase a thing. Walking the streets of Sarlat was even more rewarding than the market. Its small medieval streets and buildings really made it a joy to explore. I would have taken pictures but it was about as busy as a mall during Christmas. Plus, you can’t always get the best pictures when it’s so narrow. We would recommend visiting this town. The Dordogne valley is most famous for the oldest cave art drawings ever found, which we decided not to see, because they only allowed viewings of reproductions of the originals. When we got back to the van it was time to find a place to stay and have a shower (it has been awhile for us) and found out that Perigueux was the closest, cheapest and the only one open until we reach the Bordeaux region. We drove back to the campsite and decided on spending 3 nights, as there is a discount, plus it also allowed us the time to get an oil change done on the van and do a small load of laundry. The oil change cost us 34.90 euros and all they did was change out the oil, not the filter, it’s an additional 30 euros to get the filter done too which they didn’t have on hand anyway. Besides taking a late night stroll into the city centre, we pretty much just hung out at the campsite trying to keep up with everything until we get on the road again, this time heading to Rocamadour, a town built on a cliff with apparently Roland’s sword Durandel stuck in the rocks and then to Cahors where they make a “black” or deep purple wine. Finally, we end the day with our last stop in Bergerac.

La Rochelle – To the white city and back

Our intentions this morning was to get a much needed oil change for our van. We woke early and drove to the Speedy we had passed earlier that week. They took the van in and even had the correct oil filter, but did not have the height to lift the van and work on it. We decided to make our way to La Rochelle where we learnt there were two other Speedy’s. After having no luck and driving to every suggested shop in the area we gave up and headed to our next destination which is located in the Dordogne Valley.

Cognac - Day 2

We got up rather early to see if there was a free spot at the aire de camping and were rewarded, 3 of the 4 campers had left. I chose the spot that is closest to the river La Charente. This free parking space for campers has free water, a place to empty your toilet, bathrooms, a garbage area and most importantly free electricity (we can run our fridge for free now). One of the first things I did was continue catching up on the blog writing, I am now only 3 weeks behind, much better than the previous 1+ month. We ventured into town without knowing where anything was and had a pleasant time doing so. We found an information point that had an Information centre marked on it, so off we went. This center turned out to be the history center for the town of Cognac. It was free to visit so we decided to stick around the 20 minutes or so it took to see everything. Julie came across some extremely nice candles in the gift shop and was deterred in buying them because of transportation issues (no place to store them). We then made our way to the Tourist information center after we were provided with a small town map at the history centre for Cognac. We both wanted to take a tour of one or more of the cognac distilleries here in Cognac and the tourist office said that we could find an English tour at the Hennessey distillery. So off we went to the Hennessey building. The tour ran us 9 euros each, was about 1 hour long and we had the chance to taste a new and an old cognac. The best part of the tour was the aging cellar, where they have barrels of cognac aging, it basically smelt like wine. About 2%, or around 12,000 L evaporate in these cellars per year and they call it “The Angels Share”. The tour guide made a joke, saying “you can imagine what state they are in up there”. Julie and I found it amazing how much work and how much product they go through just to get one bottle. We made our way back to the visitor building for the tasting. Julie and I have determined that we are not old enough yet to appreciate cognac. Other distilleries on the list that I would like to visit would be Remy Martin and Courvoisier, but Remy Martin is located just outside of the town centre and Courvoisier is located in a different town altogether, but still in the Cognac region. It being Halloween and all, I did my best to bring Halloween to Julie in a country that is just starting warm to the idea. We did see some kids dressed up though. We watched Hocus Pocus and some of the Simpsons Tree House of Horrors episodes. While we were at Anna’s place in Germany we read that France is the country that is embracing Halloween the most at the moment and that McDonalds is the best place to go on Halloween night. So that is where we went for something to eat. However, they only had a glass cabinet with Halloween decorations in it. To make up for it though, we learnt that all McDonalds in France provide free internet access. So we also loaded a Supernatural episode before making our way back to the van. Julie brought her vampire teeth with her (in the hopes of getting to do something for Halloween) and put them on during Hocus Pocus to feel more Halloweeny. I told her that she would just have to do a huge party when we are back in Canada next year and that I would let her start setting up for it in September. It was a great day and the weather has been great so far. Tomorrow is a national holiday for France, All Saints Day, so we will probably just be hanging out and possibly going back to McDonalds to finish uploading the updates to the blog. After that, it’s off to La Rochelle, the white city.

Cognac

An extremely long 434 km drive to Cognac proved to be worth it. Initially we drove to a town around 140 km away from Cognac which once again was an extremely nice place to park for free. It even had a place to do dishes. That being said, it was around 4pm and I knew that Julie wanted to be in Cognac for Halloween. In my wisdom I suggested to continue on and make our way to our final destination of Cognac. I have to say, this drive was probably the more eventful one we’ve had. We first got stopped along one of the back roads by a herd of cows and a few farmers guiding them. The van was pretty intimidating for the cows. The second time we had to stop was for an accident, a car rolled over in the ditch. The back roads are very windy and I can see that it would happen a lot. I mentioned earlier that day light savings has taken affect; well we seemed to have forgotten that when that happens the days are shorter. When we left to finish the drive to Cognac, at around 4:30, it was still sunny. It took only a matter of minutes before the sun started to set and almost the entire drive was done in the dark. Once in Cognac we found a parking lot, but no sign of the aire de camping, at least not until I got out of the van and took a look around. The aire de camping has room for 4 RV’s and all the spots were taken. That being said we spent the night parked in the parking lot. It is so much warmer here in Cognac it was worth the drive. Oh, and today marks our 100th day in Europe.