We start the week, on Monday 9th, accompanying Di and Garry to Bordeaux station in a taxi. They depart for San Sebastian in Spain an hour before our train back to Bergerac. We wave goodbye to them and are sad to see them go. We have had such a fun adventure with them and they are great travelling companions. Plus great cooks.
Our train is a direct 90 minute journey this time and we are now adept at calling for a taxi from the station to Hertz at the airport, where we take delivery of a small Renault. Hertz accept Cherrie’s RMS print out verifying her licence details and she can now drive the car too. Oh joy. Back to Les Couges, where our plan is for a couple of quiet days lying low, sobering up and eating only dried crusts. Well, figuratively speaking.
We start by spending an entire day at home on phone and computer in an attempt to sort out our insurance claims. Cherrie has to list, in painful detail, everything in her stolen bag, down to the last safety pin. I spend some time in communication with Amex with regard to the car insurance claim. It seems that the wheel rims were damaged and Hertz have hit me with an obscenely high bill, which they have already charged to my Amex account. This is one for me to deal with in an English speaking country, not here, so I decide to suck it and see.
Our Dutch neighbours, Tim and Frederike, stop their car on the way home to have a chat. A 40 minute chat. We first met them at the Beaumont markets last week where Tim sells tea and Frederike sells pastries she has made and items she has crocheted. They tell us that the tea and pastries always sell well. I guess that means the crochet does a slow trade. They are very friendly and keen to socialise. We agree that they will come in for a drink one evening.
We make a trip into the nearest village, the medieval delight that is Monpazier, peruse their Thursday market and pick up a few more bread crusts for our highly unsuccessful fast. Fortunately the village has moved forward a few centuries and the library is able to scan the insurance documents so they can be emailed to an unsympathetic and uncaring insurer back home who doesn’t even have the decency to acknowledge receipt of Cherrie’s hours of work documenting everything. She has edited photographs of her wearing her black pearl necklace, her ears with beautiful pearl drop earrings, and an incredible amount of supporting documentation, proof of purchase, credit card statements etc, all of which has eaten into several hours of our holiday. It’s enough to put me back onto the grog, which it does. A day or two of abstinence is quite enough I decide.
Time to cook the pigeons, I reckon. Having defrosted two, I spend some time faithfully following Dany Chouet’s recipe. It looks pretty good when I serve it. The pea puree is delicious, as are the confit onions. As for the pigeons, well what can I say? They are dreadful. Tough, all carcass and no meat and perhaps undercooked, even though I gave them a little longer as suggested by the recipe if we didn’t want rare. Such a disappointment, especially with a week-long build up. A mercy that Di and Garry weren’t here to share in my humiliation. Two pigeons will stay in the freezer here, to be put in the hands of a more accomplished pigeon chef than I.
We hear that our friends from Australia, who own this beautiful villa and who are due to join us over the weekend, are not coming. He has been ill and whilst recovering well simply does not feel strong enough to make the epic trip. At least not while we are here, which is disappointing but unavoidable. We think we might debunk earlier and head to Paris next week, rather than on the 26th as planned. Cherrie is feeling particularly displaced with no ID at all and is keen to get her temporary passport, which she can only do at the Australian Embassy in Paris.
On Friday we drive into Sarlat, where we had just a short time with Garry and Di on our garden tour day, the fateful car trip day. We surmised then that this was a city worthy of a longer visit so we book accommodation for the night and drive in a leisurely manner there. We pass through so many medieval villages, Franceis littered with them, and we stop at Beynac et Cazenac for café.
Shocking to say, I know, but we have become almost blasé about the beauty of these ancient villages. Well, except when we have to drive through them – that’s always a challenge for those of us attuned to driving on the correct side of the road. It’s the off side that’s the issue, not actually driving on the right hand side. Since Cherrie has been able to drive here, I recognise that it is probably more stressful to be the front seat passenger than the driver, as they are the ones who can see that the car is about to run off the road.
Once in Sarlat, we first drive to the railway station where I manage to make myself understood that we want to change our train tickets from Bergerac to Paris from the 26th to the 18th. I feel quite proud that I achieve this, and pass over the required exchange fee of €44. Mindful that it’s quite possible I have just been ripped off due to my shameful lack of language skills, I smile sweetly and wish the man bon journo. It may well be a particularly bon journo for him.
We leave our car at the cheap hotel we have booked at the top of the hill and walk into this beautiful town.
We figure we can have lunch today because we’ll walk it off going back up, but we settle on a light lunch because we have booked a really good restaurant for tonight. Enough of this fasting malarkey. We specially chose a bistrot off the beaten track to avoid the tourist prices. This one is also avoided by the locals, and we soon realise that’s for good reason. We chose the plat du jour, which is coq au vin. Literally. And a good deal more coq than vin. This was the oldest rooster known to man with enormous leg bones which would put a spring lamb to shame. Still, we’ve left room for our much anticipated dinner. When we get back outside, it’s raining. Of course we have no wet weather gear with us. I find a hairdressing salon which looks to be good, that is the women leaving seem to have good haircuts. I’m overdue for a style, and luckily they can fit me in. My hair is cut by a Frenchman who speaks excellent English. When I complement him, he says that he lived in America for 21 years and has returned to France with his American wife, who was a French teacher prior to her recent retirement. Their adult children have stayed in America. I am happy with my haircut and as my long term hairdresser in Sydney is French I think that perhaps I need to stick with only French hair stylists. The Russian who cut it in New York was, I think, trained as a hedge trimmer. Cherrie has been wandering as best she can under cover (not in the change of ID sense, which right now she is perfectly suited for, but in the staying out of the rain sense) and has found a pair of gold knot earrings very similar to those that were amongst her stolen jewellery. She takes me to look at them and I agree that they are lovely and so I buy them for her. This makes me sound incredibly generous, but of course Cherrie has no means of paying for anything, poor thing.
By now the rain is so heavy that there is no way we will walk the rooster off and so I ring for a taxi to pick us up in the Rue de la Republique, by the Banque Populaire. The taxi driver laughs at me over the phone, such is my shocking French. He speaks perfect English, German, Dutch and Spanish, as well as French. We warns me that he can’t get to us without a 30 minute wait which I agree to, so embarrassed am I. It’s cold as well as wet, but we dutifully wait under the awning of the Banque and he turns up 35 minutes later and very quickly becomes our driver for the day, with an agreement that he will pick us up for dinner and again to return us at the end of the evening.
At the hotel, we make our Paris plans, which include a two day side trip to Normandy to see Saint Marlo and Mont Saint Michel, as well at the D Day landing beaches and Bayeaux. We book a hotel before we can take our apartment in Les Invalides, which we have been able to secure two days earlier.
Our taxi driver delivers us to our chosen restaurant, which is listed in the top 3 restaurants in Sarlat. After a few days of light food, we are ready for a feast of the gastronomic kind. It’s a 7pm booking and we are not surprised when we are the first to arrive. And the last. It doesn’t take us long to realise that we are at Fawlty Towers and served by a young man who is the perfect combination of Basil and Manuel. He’s all legs and all dim. The menu is completely uninspiring and there is nothing on it that we want to eat. However, not surprisingly perhaps, we do order. We both have the soft shell crab followed by fillet of beef for Cherrie and duck breast for me. The crab comes cunningly disguised as chicken nuggets, but not as tasty, and the duck is almost inedible. I have ordered pink but it arrived julienned, overcooked to a grey colour and with a nice edging of unrendered fat. Inedible. We get the giggles, as we truly had expected a good meal in a good restaurant, our last hurrah before Paris where we don’t expect to be able to indulge in gastronomie. The only person to share in the joke is Manuel and it seems cruel to include him, as he is trying so hard. Our mirth increases when I return from a visit to the loo and insist that Cherrie check it out. Here’s why
And here’s a photo of the restaurant when we leave it at 8.40pm
On Saturday we had planned to visit the famed Sarlat markets but it is raining again, we have not bought wet weather gear with us and anyway we can’t find anywhere to park the car for love nor money. So we drive back to Les Couges, stopping at a little village on the way to buy baguette and a lamb shoulder to slow cook for tonight, and the remainder of our nights here. It’s nice to be ‘home’ again, driving through very pretty country to arrive at our place in the country, surrounded by fields and vegetable gardens lovingly tendered by their owners, the plentiful roses and wisteria which seemingly grow everywhere.
After two weeks here in the Dordogne, and our time in the Loire, Languedoc and right down the Canal du Midi, we both have a really good understanding of the French countryside, its beauty and diversity.
My slow cooked lamb with garlic, anchovies and thyme is more successful than the rubber pigeon and we enjoy a game of vigorous ping pong prior to tucking in.
We have made contact with Jan, a friend of our friend Gil, and she has suggested that we meet up today, Sunday, at a speciality plant show at L’Abbaye Nouvelle near Gourdon in the Lot, a neighbouring district to the Dordogne. It’s a little over an hour’s drive, on a different route again and again through beautiful country. We park on the side of the road and walk to the Abbey and the fair
A fabulous collection of plants, displayed and for sale by their proud growers. Many of the plants were recognisable to Cherrie but most notable was the wide variety of figs and lavenders.
It was a beautiful day, the first sun we have seen (and felt) in a few days and perfect for this sort of outing. Jan and her husband Philippe were entertaining at a friends house on top of the hill just above the Abbey and we were invited up there for a drink, an invitation we readily accepted. It turned out to be an ex-pats party – full of English, Australian and Kiwis, all living in this area and all very friendly and charming. We spent another couple of hours in this convivial company before embarking on the drive home, where we now are.
Tomorrow, Monday, is another public holiday, the 4th this month. We will spend it in a leisurely manner, cleaning the house and packing for Paris. Tomorrow evening Tim and Frederike and their son Boris will join us for a drink. And then to gay Paris…..
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