Sarlat la Caneda - a City of then and Now

I think we tried to rent a place in Sarlat la Caneda in the Perigord Noir without much luck and as it turned out, our week in Le Bugue was delightful – things sometimes turn out for the better. Sarlat was certainly on our “must see” list just the same. We passed by on our way to Le Bugue and I distinctly remember passing a McDonalds on the outskirts of the town. Not a great omen I must say.



The sign post really doesn't invite you to the delights that are Sarlat Le Caneda..
The village grew from Carolingian origins and survived the ravages of the 100 years war due to its loyalty to the King of France.



We emerged from the shadowed laneways of Medieval Sarlat
 through arched coverways into the morning sun.

It was Monday and Sarlat was our destination. It was unfortunate that we were not aware that market days in Sarlat were Saturdays (the day we passed by) and Wednesdays. The town is supposedly renown for being one of the best markets in France offering the best in Perigord produce including black truffles, walnuts, foie gras, and wild mushroom as it probably has done over centuries past.

Still, we enjoyed the serenity of the old part of town with very few people (tourists that is) which is sometimes as good (to us) as the hustle bustle of the maddening crowd.



As we walked the streets and laneways, we seemed to have Sarlat to ourselves.



Geese, duck - the Perigord Noir



We were there in spring as the Wisteria coloured the walls in purple.

 On arrival we parked the car – I found a spot on the high side on Boulevard Eugene Le Roy and we walked through a car park and the gardens of what seemed like a council building or school. The pathway led us down into the old village lanes with buildings of stone rising above us. Not only were the walls made of stone but so were the roof tops. We’d never seen anything like it before. The south of France had red/brown terracotta tiles for roofing but here in the Dordogne, the architecture took on a totally appearance.



Where are all the people, friends ask us when we return to home and show our photos.
We travel in the shoulder seasons of spring and autumn - so pleasant for us.

Sarlat La Caneda, we were told from our now much tattered DK Eye Witness Travel Guide of France has the most examples of Medieval, Renaissance and 17th century buildings in the whole of France and we can believe its true.


What Leon hasn't mentioned (and he should have!) is that the ceramic goose in this picture was for sale. It was a snap at a mere 450 euro, and the thing I have most wanted to bring home from France EVER!
Now I don't know what you guys all think, but surely ANY man who wanted to make his wife happy, could have worked out how to find that amount of money AND of course the minor matter of how to transport a 1 metre high ceramic goose home to Melbourne in my carry on luggage. I mean really! Anyone visiting Melbourne soon?  It's probably still there... 




Like this statue, we did the same - relaxing in the sunshine and watching the village come to life in the morning sunshine.



But he does tend to look a little bored though, doesn't he - surely not.

The shaded laneways squeezed between the buildings lead us out to the main open area of Rue de la Liberte, the Renaissance centre of Sarlat. The late morning sun offered a bit more warmth than the shaded laneways and we were yearning for our second coffee for the morning. We chose one of the many Cafes and sat on the wicker chairs under a spreading umbrella to just chill out and take in the the wonderful architecture before our eyes.



I have a fascination for arches, doorways and windows throughout France.

Sue had it in mind to shop for foie gras to take home and maybe some truffles. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough room for the truffles (on my credit card). A few bottles of wine did find their way into the basket with the foie gras though.
Sarlat did have a modern day dark side to it, and most likely it also did over the centuries. While we were there we took a walk around the 16th century Cathedrale St Sacerdos to find a poor soul stretched out upon the ground in what was possibly an alcohol induced coma. Minutes later an ambulance arrived to take him away.

Still, I guess you’ll find sad sights like that almost anywhere.
You can’t expect to experience all the wonderful sights of these magic villages in the space of a day trip but how fortunate you can be to take these few hours into your memory for the rest of your life.

We moved on to the most southern end of Sarlat where we came to the more modern part of the city. Super Markets, Mc Donalds and heavy traffic. We were transported from the Medieval times to “Back to the Future” as Marty McFly might say.

It was time to drive back to Le Bugue, our cottage, some foie gras and a bottle of chilled Rose in the afternoon sun before having dinner.

Leon, I've poured you a glass of chilled Rose and the foie gras is served.

Next Wednesday we travel to the Bastide towns of

Montpazier and Montflanquin

Another Quiet Weekend

We had a fairly quiet weekend but exciting in another way. We spent some time planning for Sue's 60th Birthday trip to France next May. The plan is to have her birthday dinner at L'escargot on rue Montoguiel where we ate last year and we both loved it. We'll spend two nights in Paris before hitting the TGV to Marseille for a couple of nights and then off to Saint Remy de Provence via the Luberon.
We hope to float up to the Loire to say hello to friends and pop into Chinon for a few nights before heading back to Paris and back home. This was inspired by having dinner with friends Friday night to chat about their impending adventure of living in France next year for six months.
So you can see, although the weekend was quiet, we have some future excitement on the way.


Planning for a holiday is very exciting.

RETRO RIDE on Saturday
I did get out for a ride on Saturday (doesn't he always, did I hear someone say) but this one was rather special. It was a RETRO RIDE. Now these days we have all sorts of modern lightweight bikes. My latest one is a carbon fibre frame with an 11 speed rear cluster giving me 22 speeds with the two front chain rings. Really this just confuses me sometimes but that's the way of the cycling industry marketing department these days.


THA BOYS with TOYS. Jet (on the left) has this pristine early Italian Colnago road bike from before clipless pedals and brake and gear shifters. Just lovely to another enthusiast.



My OLD bike that has taken me 1000s of kilometres of racing and training is now my single speed fun bike. It's been to France twice has been a wonderful travelling companion.

What really excites me are the older bikes and this was what our Retro Ride was all about. We dragged out our old bikes and our old cycling clothes - mine was from the late 70s. It was a mild winter morning with a low of 10 degrees, warming to about 17 and a clear sky over the Bay. What more can you expect on a winter Melbourne morning?

JOHN BRACKS - MELBOURNE ARTIST
The brown artist I call him............
With such a quiet weekend I wondered what we could post and as I did some surfing on the net and reading other Blogger's posts, I remembered John Bracks, an Australian painter who passed away before the year 2000. As an art student who was taken to the gallery with the class, I was intrigued by the Bracks paintings. They have an irony about them that appealed to me. Later I worked in the city at the Myer Emporium as a Display Assistant and later a Window Dresser, I think we call them a Visual Merchandiser these days.
Anyway, as I part of Melbourne city life, I saw a lot of what Bracks painted in the daily goings on in Melbourne.



Collins Street 5PM - 1955
I remember scenes like this from my first job. Rushing from the job and down to the station to catch the train.



The Bar - 1955.
Can you notice a similarity to a scene from a French Ipressionist's painting?
This was in a time when Melbourne had the 6 o'clock swill. The pubs closed at 6 PM and the workers would try to get as many beers in before they wandered off home for dinner.

Two Typists - 1955.
I get the impression that the feet above the heads of the Typists belong to the people in "Collins Street 5PM" with the men going off to "The Bar" for the 6 O'clock swill. Can you see the relation between these 1955 John Bracks works?



Self Portrait - 1955

Latin American Grand Final - 1969
Bracks later finally came out of his brown phase and started to add more colour - well it was the 60s and the 50s were so brown anyway.

Maybe the reason that Bracks appeals to me as an artist is that he painted everyday scenes that were from my growing up period of the 50s and 60s.
I don't claim to know a great deal about John Bracks (a real Melbourne boy), I just liked his work so I suggest if you'd like to know more, follow this link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brack

Having finished the weekend blog, I now need to pop off to mow the lawns and I think I heard Sue say something about vacuuming. See you on "Wednesdays in France".

Saturday Satire and a song or Two as Well

Adam Hills does a TV series called Spicks and Specks - a sort of music and comedy thing.
So here he is as a standup comedian at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.


 Introducing Tripod.


And a little of Spicks and Specks.

Things Change

Like all cities, Melbourne has evolved.

By blogging, I'm learning more about my home town.

Earlier this week I had an appointment with my client, the Victorian Police Force in the CBD of Melbourne which is in Spencer Street. As I walked along Spencer Street to Flinders Street, I remembered a post I did previously on early Melbourne Markets. On Flinders Street we had the old Fish Market on the banks of the Yarra River which runs through our city.

Over the past year or so, this new building reached into the city skyline. I can't remember what was there before but it wasn't the old fish market. Whatever was there replaced the market and now it has been replaced by this new structure. i wonder what the fish market replaced????

I had my very battered Canon pocket camera with me and tried to position myself in the same location as I remembered the old photos were taken. I wasn't overly successful but you can get an idea of how things have changed in Melbourne. 

Looking down Flinders Street from the west side.



The new streetscape from about the same position. There's almost a similar architecture.



This scene is from the south side with the railway crossing the intersection of Flinders and Spencer. Notice the iron railway bridge,  it was widened after this picture to add a further track.



And here is the same scene in 2011.



And as I walked back towards my car, I walked under some of the original iron structure of that railway bridge that was most likely from the 1800s.



OK, I know its not a Funky Friday sort of post. Maybe next week....

A Brocante in Le Bugue and the Cave of the Sorcerer

Our first full day in Le Bugue for me started with a ride on the bike out to the east and as I rode, I saw signs advertising a Brocante in Le Bugue. I thought that I must tell Sue on my return.

As I rode, the local train passed by and further up the road I saw a sign that said this way to Grotte de Saint Cirq. My curiosity got the better of me so I rode the small deserted road amongst farms on the lower tracks and then I started climbling into the hills. I missed the turn off to the left as it really wasn't very well sign posted, but returned and found what seemed little more than a private driveway. Towards the end of the road bordered by bamboo and banana trees you enter what was a troglodyte village with caves that have prehistoric paintings of ibex, horses and bison on the walls. Its not on the usual tourist track and I thought I would rush back and tell Sue about my discovery.
I hadn't realised until I researched this site while posting this blog that it is also known as La Grotte du Sorcier - "The cave of the sorcerer" due to the cave drawings within, one of a human (the Sorcier) along with the animals that early man hunted.


An early morning ride on roads unknown is always a delight.

And riding up this paticular road unknown I came across this sight - the hamlet of Saint Cirq.



No one was there, it was deserted, no tourists at all. It was all mine.



Who lived in these hallways behind rock faces and how long ago?



And how many years ago was this little village formed - the caves held paintings of pre-historic man.



The building morphed into the rock face and you wondered what was man formed
and what was natural.



The road back down from Saint Cirq to Le Bugue was like this - heaven on a Spring morning.



More signs were out on the road promoting the Brocante which I mentioned to Sue over breakfast.

So we wandered into the village and decided to put Grotte de Saint Cirq off to the afternoon.
The village was buzzing with people - it was alive and we saw Le Bugue in a different light. The Brocante slithered through the laneways of the village and as wandered aimlessly, we took in the sights of the local architecture, people and the village. I think the colour of the Brocante enhanced Le Bugue beyond our initial earlier expectations. Le Bugue had come alive, as it and the surrounding district would over the next week.

We did go back to Saint Cirq in the afternoon and would you believe, we were the only guests for the tour within, except for the bats that flew overhead when disturbed. We saw the paintings on the cave walls by early man and spent time looking through the small museum of artifacts, and all this due to an early morning ride of discovery.

A link to Grotte Saint Cirq

http://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.grottedusorcier.com/&ei=AtfkTYieJYX0vQOFx9iaBw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCIQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgrotte%2Bsaint%2Bcirq%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26biw%3D1600%26bih%3D655%26prmd%3Divns