The back-roads of France (Sunday 29th July 2013)

We continued our drive along the country roads and lanes of Le Tarn and over in the adjacent region Le Lot. BTW, in each case the regions are named after the main rivers in the respective valleys.

A short drive from Caylus found us in the small village of Limogne-en-Quercy where it was market day. Many of the narrow streets around the town church were full of street stalls selling all sorts of fresh produce and a few other non-edible items. One such item was a hand-made carousel being driven by pedal-power! We hunted around the market stall for some items for lunch later in the day. We gathered a loaf of bread, olives, tomato, apricots, jambon (ham), dried pork sausage (like cabana), strawberries and Camembert. It was great fun to amongst the crowds of locals and tourists. But not so many of the latter as this village was way off the beaten track

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We continued on our journey heading for Rocamadour, now in the Le Lot region. Once again the landscape changed dramatically. All of a sudden we found ourselves amongst tall, rocky gorges carved out by the Lot River. The cliff faces were incredibly high with there often being so more than a few road widths between the bottom of a rock-face and the river. At a number of places the road went partially under the over-hanging rock. Countless tunnels had been pushed through the rock when there was no other option. Despite the steep and seemingly inhospitable terrain little village continued to pop up on regular basis.

We spied one such village called Saint Cirq-Lapopie clinging to a rocky mountain-side. This was the place for lunch. We parked the car at the bottom of the village and commenced the walk up the very steep streets to find a place with a view to enjoy lunch. We headed for the church perched improbably at the top of the town. As we ascended, shops and restaurants appeared before us all doing a good trade. The view from the Church up the Lot river valley and across the village below was worth the strenuous climb.

Time was getting on so and our target city of Nantes in the Loire Valley was getting any closer. We drove for another 30 minutes up the valley and realised it was time to leave the back-road and hit the motorway. The last 24 hours spent in this splendid countryside was a really memorable time.

Nantes was still more than 350kms away when we pulled into a road-side stop for a rest and a coffee. Kerry has summoned up the courage to drive so I gladly handed over the keys and took the position in the back seat. She very quickly became familiar with the car as it's layout is largely the same as the Scenic, the Clio and the Koleos. Under Emily's expert navigational skills and timely advice about road and traffic conditions Kerry became more and more comfortable with driving.

It was getting late with a couple of hundred kms to go so we diverted to the town of Poitiers. I couldn't find anything much about this city in the guide books bit that didn't create a problem. We were only looking for a bed and dinner and a launch pad for tomorrow's journey to Rouen.