The Garonne and the Dordogne

Wednesday and we leave Perigueux for another sojourn onto the back streets of France, through the most rural areas and small towns - I reckon regardless of Michelle or Samantha that the shortest route to Garmin looks like the best, regardless of the road width or windiness.

Along the way we stopped at the Rouffignac Caves, formed some millions of years ago by a grotto with stalagmite and stalactite formations. Along the way the Dordogne Valley was formed, lower than the rivers that had formed the grotto and the Rouffignac caves dried up. There is proof that great bears occupied these caverns from the bear "nests" or lairs dug into the clay floor for their hibernation. Much evidence of their presence can be seen from the bear claw mark scratches along the walls above the lairs. Scientists have determined that these great bears had abandoned the caves many many years before man came on the scene and there is no evidence that man and bear ever met in the caves.

About 14,000 years ago prehistoric artists penetrated the caves and started to sketch and etch animal drawings on the walls and ceilings of the caves. These drawings include a predominance of woolly mammoths  and rhinoceroses, horses and rams or ibex. Unfortunately some visitors to the caves, before they were put under control, decided to add modern graffiti and their names to prove how daring they were to deface the drawings - this rhinoceros cave drawing shows the evidence.

In one section a sketch of the Great Ceiling contains 66 drawings of these animals. Apparently at the time the drawings were made the floor of that section of the cave was only about 3 feet high and the artist(s) must have laid on their backs with dim tallow lamps to light the area, and the sketches, in proper or full perspective, must have been almost impossible for the artists from a prone position, 3 foot away from the drawing. Thus a horse's head is done in great detail whereas the body is less so.

Scientists have only recently discovered that woolly mammoths had an extra layer of fur and protection around the butt area, and yet this detail was drawn on these sketches/etchings, thus it has been determined that the artists must have been familiar with the great beasts, in life, in order to correctly draw this biological feature. Rhinos also died out at the end of the last European ice-age and man must have mixed with them in order to sketch these animals at Rouffignac.

Again we were not allowed to photograph inside the caves but, by the modern miracle of books in English on sale at the front desk  I can post a few photos for your edification - see above.





Later in the afternoon we journeyed down to a delightful small "town(?)" - more like a row of
small hotels next to a road - right on the Dordogne River and stopped in at out hotel in La Roque-Gageac. Tomorrow we will take a small boat ride down the river for a couple of miles.


For dinner we drove to the town of Sarlat la-Caneda for dinner. Sarlat is a charming little tourist town in the Dordogne area. It seems to attract a great many tourists and deservedly so. We spend part of two days in Sarlat, dinner tonight and some shopping tomorrow.