Deliciously Dysfunctional Dordogne - A Trip Report

Sounds yummy, I'm waiting!

Looking forward to it also.

Tom

It's raining, cold and miserable here St Cirq. But I know this will cheer me up, looking forward to it.

The coffee will be brewed tomorrow morning and I so look forward to the beginning of your report StCirq.

Hi StC,

>It will be the expurgated version (I myself and my publisher get to deal with the unexpurgated stuff,...<

Good for you!

When does the book come out?

StCirq, I'm really looking to your report, especially since I have been to your beautiful hamlet in the Dordogne and was just steps from your home I later discovered. I came across one of your reports on another site one time and loved it, by the way. Oh no, am I coming across as a stalker?

LOL, ira.

My publisher would like to know the answer to that same question! I've got a huge amount of sifting through almost 20 years of journals, photos, trip reports, receipts, and memories to put it all together in cohesive fashion, but it's coming along.

Moolyn, not to worry. I'm honored you took the time to visit my hamlet. Just glad you weren't there when part of the cliff fell down last spring!

Looking forward to your report!

Great anticipation fills the Nuke household!

I'll be grinding coffee beans as soon as I sign off here!

Warning - Long and Potentially Tedious!

July 30, 2008

The day has finally arrived for our long-awaited return to St-Cirq. Almost two and a half years have transpired since we were last in the embrace of our home village in the heart of the Périgord – years during which we endured a seemingly never-ending smackdown of personal and familial tragedies: illnesses, divorces, deaths, and the inexorable unraveling of a life we had spuriously come to think of as one smooth sail. Not so. It was if we had bypassed all the normal bumps in the road, and while we weren’t looking they had coalesced into a giant cancerous ganglion and come after us from all angles with a vengeance. Somehow, though, through wit and grit and a collective personal determination to slay the beast and regain equilibrium, here we were, whole and happy again…and on our way back to the place most dear to our hearts.

We were coming from all directions, a motley crew of cousins and ex-in-laws and new folks who had recently joined the skeletal remains of the family. The buildup to this trip had been significant; it was impossible to view it as a mere vacation. By design it was a journey of reunion, redemption, and renaissance. But how lucky we were to have the Périgord as our destination! Who could be anything but lighthearted in that verdant paradise? Who could not regain a sense of peace there? Who could not put all bad things to rest in that ancient land?

The first out of the box are my son T and I, headed for a first night in Paris preceded by a wickedly complicated route that in retrospect I should have thought twice about. Trying to save some feeble dollars, I had booked us from DC to Philly to Heathrow to the Eurostar to Paris. Insanity (but it runs in the family). The DC to Philly leg was of course a breeze. The Philly to Heathrow leg on USAir was irritating (scowling moon-faced flight attendant was just having a bad day and let everyone know it), but manageable. Heathrow – so much bigger than when I was last there in 1999, so much more modern, and so very much more chaotic. But we found our way to the Tube in the morning crush and within about an hour were at St. Pancras Station. Our first time here. After a wander around to get the lie of the land and confirm that our Eurostar train was leaving on time in a couple of hours, we meandered over to a pub, as T said you cannot be in London, even for 2 hours, without sitting in a pub. And he’s 18 now, and wanted to try an ale….not that he hasn’t tried one or two already.

I don’t recall the name of the pub. It was a block or so from the station, on a corner, and had lovely pictures of pub food plastered to the windows. Seemed a pretty typical place, though of course that close to the train station one doesn’t expect much. Good thing, too. I choose from the Small Plates – Light ‘n Healthy menu, filet of chicken with a potato-mushroom puree. T chooses a hamburger on focaccio with crisps. We each order an ale. The waiter speaks British English with a Central European accent infused with a speech defect that is so mystifying we find ourselves just pointing to things and nodding ignorantly, as though we were in some exotic, alien land. The food comes. A bare, overcooked chicken breast fillet on a massive, thick mound of oversalted mashed potatoes with a sprinkling of wrinkled mushrooms and chives. Light ‘n Healthy? The first bite goes down like an anchor in my stomach. T’s hamburger is in some bagel-like dough thing that disintegrates when you bit into it. The crisps are anything but – huge, soft, and well-slimed in some kind of lard it seems. We try to eat, but we’re queasy just looking at this. We quaff our ales, though, and look out the window and enjoy the passing madness, including a London Cab that has some banner on it with a quote cautioning people not to enter a taxi if they believe they are carrying the Bubonic plague.

These are the jet-lag moments, that space you always enter after a certain period of travel when time is impossible to quantify and everything around you seems dream-like and unhinged. We leave the pub and wander through a crowd that includes a tall blonde man with green hair carrying a large stuffed zebra on his shoulder, a few disconsolate street musicians, young female tourists galore with bellies exposed, chewing gum, yakking up a storm of “like….he…like…,” a Rastafarian or two, a few dapper businessmen with polished briefcases, an elegant older woman stepping primly from a cab, long pearls swinging and sensible shoes. Into the chaos of the station, where we have a coffee until it’s time to board our train.

I was apprehensive about the Eurostar….being under water, that is. I’m not all that great in tunnels. But apart from the obvious steeper-than-usual descent, and the popping of the ears, it’s really just like many other train rides. What I loved was leaving the brick rowhouses and gray cheerless skies of England and popping up in sunny green France in less than an hour. It was like being a piece in a giant geographical board game – I’m going 5 spaces to France!

And then before we know it, we are at the Gare du Nord, which always strikes me as slightly sinister. But the familiar bitter yeasty smell of Paris is in the air, and that lovely inflected hum of the language all around, and even in our deteriorated mental state we are thrilled to be “home” again. This is one place we belong. This is part of us. This we know.

A quick taxi ride takes us to the Hôtel de France. Paris, contrary to my expectations, really does seem deserted. There’s no traffic, even now at rush hour. Most of the people on the streets appear to be tourists, peering into large unfolded maps, carrying large bottles of water, walking in directionless groups with fingers pointed at this and that. It’s really quiet here, almost eerily so.

We check into the hotel, where we are greeted like long-lost family, which I suppose we are in a way. T and I have a room with a balcony overlooking Les Invalides, which looks to be ready for a dome-polish sometime soon, though it’s still glinting merrily in the early evening sun. It’s warmingly familiar, all that’s below on the streets, the whine of vespas, the click of heels on pavement, the smell of recent rain, the rooftops and gardens of the buildings around. We’re blurry-eyed now, and hungry. We wander over to the Place Ecole Militaire and note the new café there, and the old ones too. T’s favorite restaurant is closed, and we prefer having a drink or coffee at the cafés on the Place to eating there. We don’t want to do the rue Cler. Our favorite Indian restaurant is open, but we’re not feeling like Indian food. So we opt for the Thai place opposite our hotel. It’s perfect. Some Tom Ga Yum, spicy sautéed shrimp in garlic sauce, a bit of rice, and we’re sated and ready for a good long sleep.

We fall into bed at the hotel and watch 10 minutes of bad French TV before we turn out the lights. A light breeze wafts through the window, and except for the occasional toot of a horn, Paris is somnolent. Tomorrow we have a long train ride to the Dordogne. Tomorrow we go home. “I love this place” says T.

I love this! Can't wait for more.

Looks like you're off to a great start, StCirq, both with this travel report and the next part of your life. Resilience, adaptibility, and determination will get us through most anything, won't they? Glad to hear the best is still ahead for you and yours!

Before we switched to renting apartments in Paris, my grandson and I stayed at the Hotel de France based on your recommendation, maybe in the same room as you most recently occupied.

Was there a spacious marble bathroom with a lovely deep tub and no shower curtain? And outside the bedroom's french doors, black wrought iron, curlicued dividers separating your balcony from the neighbor's? Loved standing out there at night looking at the Invalides' illuminated dome gleaming across the way.

Hope everything just keeps getting better and better for you as you travel onwards.

Medicine for the soul..

I love your stuff, StCirq. Looking forward to the rest of the detail, derailment and diversion (however expurgated it may be).

Glad you're back in the trip report business!

Love your style, Mellen. We look forward to reading your next installation. Next summer, we will return to the Dordogne...I understand the pull, the draw...it is mesmerizing...

Can't wait for the next installment. I like your (writing) style.

August 1, 2008

I’d wisely booked us on a 12:50 train to Périgueux, knowing we’d want to loll around a bit in the morning before continuing our long trip. Waking to a cloudy Paris morning around 9 after a sound sleep we dress and wander over to a favorite bakery on the Avenue Bosquet for a pain au chocolat and a croissant aux amandes, which we cart back to La Terrasse on the Place Ecole Militaire to enjoy with our grands cafés crèmes. The street cleaners in their green trucks and bright suits are making a commotion all around the place, doing a fine job of keeping the City of Light clean. It’s a Friday morning, just before 10, and the passersby are about equally split between tourists and locals on their way to work or shopping. Then back to the hotel to pack the few things we’d unpacked, pay up the bill, and make reservations for the four nights we plan to spend here on our way home.

We take the uncrowded metro to the Gare d’Austerlitz, pick up our reserved tickets from the guichet there, and sit in the café there for a small lunch before boarding the train for our five-hour journey. I have a salade caprese – tomates, mozzarella, basilica with olive oil and lemon. Taylor has crudités and emits sighs of pleasure at his first taste in a few years of one of his favorite edibles. It’s just train café fare, but it attains a nice level of fresh Frenchness.

The train is, of course, on time. It’s a TER train that will go to Limoges, where we will have about 5 minutes to change to the train to Périgueux. We have assigned seats, which is good, as the train is crowded. We later realize when we are listening to the radio that it is August 1, the day a few million Frenchmen leave one place in France bound for another, so we are lucky to have a place on this train. I’ve never been on French train cars like this before, and I suppose that means they are fairly recent additions to the stable. There are more luggage racks than ever before – not only ones at the ends of the cars and above the seats, but at least a couple more in each car tucked between seats that back up to each other. And almost every car has a couple of single seats with a tiny table between them. There is a slightly alarming downward dip in the floor, too, at the end of each car as you approach the door, and the shiny glass doors have no handles to flip, no buttons to push; you just put your hand on a panel and it glides open. Nice. There are also the typical train cars with the cabinets that hold about 6 people, 3 on 3 facing each other, with a narrow corridor down the side of the train. There’s no snack car, just a jaunty young olive-skinned man who roams up and down the train hawking sandwichs and salades and boissons from a cart.

I love French trains. Arriving in the country and hopping on a train early in a trip is a nice overview of the French population: teenagers wearing black jeans and t-shirts clumped together with eyes closed and iPod wires in a tangle around their necks; young families hunkered over a table playing cards and munching on homemade picnics revealed from Tupperware tubs; a prim elderly couple in tweeds and bifocals, holding their canes and speaking in hushed voices; lovers nestled in a limbfest, oblivious to the world around them; backpackers with dreadlocks and water bottles hanging from their packs trying to steal cigarettes in the spaces between the train cars; and the dapper conductors greeting everyone with “Bonjour, M’sieur, M’dame, vos billets, s’il vous plait…”

You churn slowly out of Paris amid a spider’s web of tracks, graffiti everywhere the eye can see, smokestacks and highrises competing for the view on both sides, and then you are gliding along the river Seine, with pert suburbs on either side of the tracks, tiled roofs and narrow streets, a glimpse of a café here, a tabac there….and then through a zone artisanale with Peugot factories and wrecked car lots and bus depots and warehouses….and just as soon there are fields and a barn here or there and the autoroute in the distance and a cathedral spire poking up amid the wheat and small clusters of towns in the distance and a small pond here with poplar trees dripping with balls of mistletoe, the occasional abandoned stationmaster’s house with shutters boarded up and dark water stains on the stone walls, a lone dog zig-zagging on a dirt path.

And before you know it the train is thrumming along fast and you’re in the heart of the countryside. The sun is poking out from under cumulous clouds, and you’re blinded going into a tunnel here or there, and tossed to one side as you slam by an oncoming train, and tipped right and left on embankments as you navigate through hillsides. And suddenly, there’s a plain…..green, green as far as you can see…..full of tall, white, gleaming windmills. It’s new. It’s stark. It’s a huge outdoor museum piece. It’s the fruition of some engineer genius’s life work. I’ve seen them on the Autoroute du Sud, but these are new and spectacular. They seem to pass by the train windows forever. And then we are lost in the hills and forests leading toward Limoges.

Limoges: a wan and heartless place for the most part, except of course for the porcelaine. We have only five minutes to change trains here, though, so it doesn’t matter. Grab the luggage, descend from one train, board another adjacent one, and we’re off in minutes for the Périgord, the landscape growing lusher, warmer, softer around every curve, the distinctive architecture of honey-colored stone and red-tiled roofs in the shape of a flip haircut showing up in every town, every farmhouse. An occasional lauze roof. Sleek horses swishing flies in the fields, fat white and black cows, and chickens and ducks and geese waddling through every jardin potager that grows by the tracks.

Here we are in Périgeuex, almost the end of our journey. The lady in the EuropCar greets us with hugs and kisses on both cheeks, to our surprise, and says how long has it been? Too long! We fill out the paperwork and jump into a sleek little dark gray Peugot Batmobile that has a hair-trigger clutch and a brake that brings the car to an abrupt halt if you merely glance at it. I make an utter fool of myself getting out of the parking lot, and leave behind a wake of French folks laughing so hard they are bent over and covering their mouths with their hands as I pull out onto the main street. T crouches down in the passenger seat hoping not to be noticed with this mad woman. No matter, I’ll get the hang of it.

And by the time we are in Le Bugue, a half-hour later, I and the car are friends. But what has happened here in two years? Most of it is familiar, but then, so much has changed. New stores, new restaurants, one end of town almost entirely deserted while the other is newly built up. Things in different places. Things gone. Some obvious, some subtle. But clear vestiges of the passage of time, even a very short time. We’ll check it out in more detail in the days to come. For now, we are so nonplussed to find our old Intermarché boarded up and a humongous shiny new one built up next to it with a massive parking lot, we have a moment where we really feel we’ve landed in the wrong place. It’s disconcerting. But there are other disconcerting moments to come. Things change. We’ve always loved this place because it never changed. We could always count on coming back here to a kind of Brigadoon, standing still in a time vacuum, dependably and totally familiar. Not any longer.

WOW! I am hooked! More please.

Oh StCirq, this is so lovely!! I am enthralled and can't wait for more. But I did LOL at your last 2 sentences. We were recently in Albas in The Lot and christened it Brigadoon as we had so much trouble finding it and it did seem like a place that was trapped in time. Many of our friends haven't seen the movie and didn't know what we were talking about. Beautiful trip report, please keep going...... Cathie

You promised "fun" and you sure delivered! I leave for my recently purchased home in Le Bugue on 08/25/2008. Now I am forced to take/find a computer to not miss a day of your report. Thank you for your three D's!

More
Soon
Please!

>> so much has changed. New stores, new restaurants, one end of town almost entirely deserted while the other is newly built up. Things in different places. Things gone. <<<


Is that great wine shop still in Le Bugue??? We'll be in the Dordogne for 2 weeks next year, and the wine shop will be one of the first "orders of business" - if it's still there.

Stu Dudley

The new Intermarché is, alas, closed. We had hoped to arrive in time to provision ourselves with a few things, but we can’t. We pull up cautiously into the almost empty parking lot of the new building, its gleaming façade punctuated by orange and black banners advertising “Thursdays, double the points on your carte de fidélité!,” advertising the new rent-a-movie section, advertising the new Bistro de l’Intermarché, right next door near the new jewelry section. Where is our old supermarket, the one that over time actually evolved from simple to pretty fancy, but is now a boarded-up wreck next door, destined for rubble? When did this happen? Is our town no longer a town? Will we be a city one day? We are still waaaaayyyy out in the countryside…how can this be? To add an even more bizarre touch to the moment during which we are trying to absorb this, there are three large dogs arranged in a sort of canine collage in front of the middle of the three rows of sliding doors of the massive new market: an Irish terrier sitting on its haunches panting, a pale bulldog stretched out on its back with legs akimbo, and a fussy little white terrier standing at attention. All by themselves. This must be the Welcome Committee, T decides. It’s a Fellini moment for sure, and I snap a picture.

We retrace our steps into the town center, where the Laval, formerly a Casino, is still open, buy some coffee and milk and Orangina Rouge and a bottle of Pécharmant, some cheese, and some Activa coconut yogurt (why don’t they have this flavor in the USA? Even I who hate coconut think this is the best flavor ever), and a baguette. And then, with that unhinged feeling creeping back even though we’re over jet lag, we head on the few kilometers to St- Cirq, where yet more surprises await.

On the way to our hamlet, we listen to a radio report that says, I think, that there has been a 500-km backup on the autoroutes today. Just imagine that. What is it that is so ingrained in the French that practically every one of them gets in a car on August 1 and goes on vacation, most of them heading south on the same routes? It’s almost perverse, the way they insist on this tradition and then love the media mileage they get out of it.

But that’s not our concern. There are no cars on the road to St-Cirq. I could drive this stretch of road blindfolded and tell you every copse, every walnut tree, every tobacco sechoir, every secluded farmhouse, every lightpole we are passing. I know to hug the curves around the stationmaster’s houses at the two places we cross the tracks, I know where the rain collects in puddles. I know where the cones rain down from the Aleppo pines in autumn. This is my road. It leads to home. So we make the turn off to St-Cirq, now newly marked with fresh signs to the hamlet and the grotte, and begin the climb up the steep hill. Funny, you can’t see the house as you usually can, just trees and more trees and a glimpse of stone where the house sits. Past the mayor’s office and the “parking lot” that holds three cars, up to the sharp left turn that requires going down to first gear, around the corner by the “petit château,” gliding through the thin alleyway that the road becomes between Mme. L’s house and the wall along which she displays her overblown, over-red, fluorescent geraniums, up around the curve, and….what in heck is this? There is supposed to be just another curve in the road past the unassuming Grotte de St-Cirq and the bamboo grove on the left, and then our driveway. But….it’s a…well, it’s a parking lot of sorts, all neatly graveled on both sides of the lane, and where the bamboo grove used to meet the lane it’s been cut back and a fence installed and more gravel to make room for, oh, a dozen (can this be?) cars, maybe more. And THEN there’s our driveway, like an afterthought…oh, some people live here, so we’ll chill on the gravel and let them have an entrance to their house. And there’s a Toutes Directions sign literally right outside the driveway. And there are broken boulders all along the sides of our house, which is built into the cliff and follows the line of the lane up the hill, so that the road literally passes over the top of our house. And the enormous rock outcropping that used to hang over the road right at the entrance to our driveway is…well, half of it has fallen off and is on the road. Hence the boulders strewn around. And it’s all being held up with heavy-duty wire, including a tree that was growing out of it, which whips in the wind now with its trunk now moored to the rock high above the road.

T and I drive up this stretch with our mouths agape. How could “our landscape” have been so altered in the two and half years since we were here? What happened to the big rock? Why is there a parking lot almost next to our house? Who needs a Toutes Directions sign up here? WHAT is going on?

We roll into the driveway and park the car, get out, walk toward the house. The wall, our lovely wall, which our feet have spent so many summers on as we sat idly chatting and gazing at the valley below, is covered in ivy, with weeds growing three feet tall out of it, forming another wall upon wall that extends so high you can’t see out to the terrace from the front door of the house. And the reason we couldn’t see the house from down below is that our view, our beautiful view of the entire Vézère valley, is entirely obscured by weed trees and fruit trees from the orchard that have flourished in the lush climate since our last visit here and formed a living wall at least 40 feet tall that hems in the entire property. Oh…my, this is disorienting! Bug-eyed, we open the front door to the house, and despite all the surprises, we know we are home. The smell of woodsmoke and stone assaults us. We know this smell. This is our smell. We’re home. The massive fireplace is there, the blue and white checked tablecloth on the kitchen table, the market baskets lined up on the chest in the kitchen, my gardening hat hanging on the porte-manteau, the bright blue earthenware pitcher in the kitchen, the familiar tile floor, the airy, antique kitchen curtains with the cherry pattern on them, the brass candleholders on the wall. We sigh. We’re ok now.

It’s dusk and the bats are out, the stars beginning to populate what we can see of the sky from within our cocoon of trees and shrubbery. Across the valley, peeking through the thickets that surround us, three lights only are visible. We’re so hemmed in here we can’t even see car lights on the road between Campagne and Les Eyzies. We’re more and more heavily shrouded as night falls, until we are enveloped in an indigo blanket. Time to climb the creaky stairs, make the beds, unpack. Back to the kitchen, which is now warmly lit, like a tent in a black wilderness, the only light for miles around, have a bite to eat. The silence is so overwhelming it’s loud. A deep, rich silence punctuated by the sounds of owls hooting, a dog baying, our teeth tearing into crisp baguette, our swallows of wine and water.

We open the shutters, fall into bed, turn the last light out, hear the rustle of wind picking up in the ink black air outside our windows, and are gone to dreamland in a matter of minutes.

Hi, Stu.

I assume you're talking about Julien de Savignac, on the road out of Le Bugue to Le Buisson.

Yes, it's still there. And there are other new wine stores in town as well. But that's the best.

What a lovely report; I find myself upset about the changes made in your absence.

Very much enjoying your report. I'll be in that general area for a few days in October, so I look forward to more.

OMG, please tell me when the book is published . . .

I had not read your previous trip reports so had no idea what a treat was in store.

Please do not expurgate more than absolutely necessary.

St. Cirq: Thank you for such a lovely read...it brings tears of rememberance of my own time in those special places...keep it coming!

Sheer poetry, StCirq! I can absolutely picture everything you describe after our glorious week in Monsac last month. We even visited the Intermarche in St. Cirq for provisions and I thought of you! I'm still working on my own trip report, but I don't think I dare show it after your masterpiece! Bravo and more quickly, please!

Welcome home. Sounds like a disorienting welcome to the home away from home. Looking forward to the explanations to come.

Great! Wow!
I hope I'm getting an autographed copy.
I hope there will be photos to see that weed wall.

Lovely, lovely read, Mellon. I'm looking forward to continuing installments. Thank you for sharing this unique perspective!

I've missed your reports from the Dordogne. but this is better than ever. Welcome back!!

This is almost too much for me to take: we were in your lovely hamlet in May, and I can just about taste the locale through your prose. Clearly, another trip (soon)is in order.

You write beautifully, StCirq.

August 2, 2008

The windows in my bedroom are massive, and when dawn breaks, if the sky is clear the light pours in unabashed. No matter how hard and fast I sleep, unless the valley is shrouded in fog I’m up as soon as the pink streaks line the horizon. It’s cool this morning, still. The loony rooster down the lane is crowing and farmers are warming up their tractors.

I creak downstairs and fling open the door to the wild and weedy landscape. Somehow the night before I’d failed to notice that the rose bushes that are supposed to frame the doorway are now 20-foot freak tree creatures with heavily thorned limbs going in all directions, including across the top of the door. A tall person entering the house could have his scalp torn off. And my rosemary bush next to one of the roses now has a trunk at least 5 inches thick and is at least 6 feet tall! But there’s more….off in the corner of the yard I see that the wooden swings have simply disintegrated, each of the four ropes hanging listlessly with a shardy lump of rotten wood at the end. And the pool terrace is covered with leaves and debris….

I need coffee to absorb all this, so I make a pot of dark, thick Arabica and take my coffee bowl out to the wall. I find some outdoor chairs under the veranda….noticing as I do so that the ping pong table actually looks to be in good shape (!)….and pull a couple out to the wall. I can’t rest my feet on the wall because of the weeds, but if I rip a few of them out I have a little tunnel through which to assess the extent of damage and figure out what T and I need to start work on.

By 8:30 am T and I have a list made up and are ready for a foray into town to the Bricomarché and Intermarché. The corn is so high along the road that driving is like being on a luge run…all you can see is the asphalt ahead and a wall of green stalks on either side, except for a few pockets where farmers have planted tobacco and the occasional already plowed field with the hay rolled up into enormous marshmallow-shaped rolls that glint in the weak morning sun. Two hawks float lazily above, and in a clearing as we reach the end of the small road from St-Cirq, farmers are hovered around a large pile of burning debris; the smoke blows through the open car windows in an acrid puff. Honestly, everyone around here appears to be a pyromaniac. It’s second only to hunting when it comes to male-dominated activities.

It’s busy in town already, a slow parade of tourist caravans and cars with Dutch and British plates, and the smaller cars of the locals heading to do errands. There is an annoying, tiny, new roundabout in the center of town, which slows traffic enormously. It used to be a wonderfully reckless free-for-all, but now is just orderly and slow, which makes the French drivers impatient.

First to the Bricomarché, our equivalent of Home Depot.. Oh…my! Also brand new and huge! I believe I have heard that the man who owns Josephine Baker’s château, Les Milandes, owns the Intermarchés and Bricomarchés. He must be doing very, very well. The old Bricomarché, tiny and cramped and jammed with home repair goods, was always a treat, not least for its employees, particularly Jeannette, whom we dubbed the Bricob**ch. Jeannette was always snarly and argumentative and positively reveled in making foreign customers feel like complete idiots. Which, of course, many of us did – it certainly took me a long time to acquire the vocabulary for things like pool wand and Philip’s head screwdriver and rust remover and awl, and Jeannette had no patience for anyone who couldn’t explain exactly what he needed in less than 10 seconds. But Jeannette is gone, as are the rest of the “Brico-boys,” as we called them, replaced by a matronly greeter at the front door: “Bienvenue au Bricomarché, Madame. Est-ce que nous pourrions vous renseigner?” and a host of hyperefficient young men who scurry around the vast reaches of the new store hunting down whatever obscure item you may want.

But we don’t want anything obscure, or even anything that we can’t find…some two-prong adapters, some sponges, some potting soil, a rake, a broom, gardening gloves, work gloves, and some clippers and a small saw. We’re in and out in 15 minutes and on to the Intermarché. What can I say? It’s massive. It takes us more than an hour to get to know the new layout and find what we need, and the lines are incredibly long (well, it’s August, the whole region is overrun), but there are definitely some “improvements.” You no longer have to weigh your fruits and vegetables, which I never minded, but I’m sure the cashiers were plenty fed up with tourists arriving at the caisse with bags full of things they hadn’t weighed. The cheese and charcuterie sections are just astonishing, bursting with hundreds and hundreds of gorgeous offerings. They sell a lot of things in bulk now, too, at a discount, which is nice to know since in a few days we will have a crowd to feed. The wine section is larger and more varied. They’ve assembled all the regional specialty products in one corner of the store, which is probably quite efficient. And there’s no longer a separate boulangerie/patisserie, so you don’t have to stand in line twice if you want bread or pastry. Some things never change, though – Dutch families with obscene numbers of offspring are cavorting around the store as though it were an amusement park, as always. I do appreciate the tolerance of the Dutch, but for the most part I’d like to give their unruly kids a good schwacking!

Back home with all our goodies and T makes a lovely lunch of bread and cheese and jambon de pays and cornichons and sliced radishes and cucumbers and arranges it all on a platter. We clear the spider webs and dust off the picnic table that’s under the veranda, haul it out onto the terrace under the linden tree, throw a tablecloth over it, bring out a bottle of spring water and some plates, and settle in for a nice nibble. And make a plan for attacking the grounds. T will rip the weeds and ivy off the wall, and I will weed the garden beds in front of the house, saw back the roses and the rosemary, and clip the bushes at the entrance to the driveway. And once we’ve finished our modest repast, that’s how we spend the afternoon.

I'm there in spirit!

August 3-4, 2008


For the next two days T and I tear into the yard with a vengeance, ripping, scything, snipping, clipping, and hauling everything in sight. I reckon we remove 100+ wheelbarrows of weeds and stalks and stems and branches from just the front terrace of the house and the wall. Ivy is an amazing plant. It gets into and under and around everything it touches, and removing it is painfully hard. We have some ivy vines that are 2 inches or more in diameter, and some of the vines that we remove from the wall are more than 5 feet long. The fig tree has sprouted a youngster, too, that has literally grown its way through the 2-foot-thick wall, so that when you stand on the pool terrace and look up you see a huge fig tree in the driveway and Baby Ficus growing out of the wall, both of them laden with unripe figs. We leave it be for now; there are more pressing matters. We want to reclaim our wall and have a decent-looking garden in front of the house.

I should mention that the house isn’t always like this; it’s just that we’ve had no use for it for the past couple of years – we weren’t using it, we weren’t renting it, no one was stopping by to admire it (our neighbor makes sure it’s still standing and that there are no major concerns, and a property management company stops by every few weeks to check on it, too), and as it is costly to maintain the grounds and we needed our pennies for more dire pursuits, we decided we could forgo the gardener. We were expecting this to some extent. What’s really amazing is how high and wide and fast it all grew. This is, after all, the most heavily forested part of France for good reason!

When we’re not gardening, we’re sitting under the Linden tree gulping water and Liptonic, or slurping perfectly ripe white nectarines and mirabelles and apricots; dipping in the pool to cool off; going through the drawers and armoires in the house to remind ourselves of what’s there and recalling a million moments from the many years we gathered there. The entire house is like an album, every nook and wall and cupboard holding memories from almost two decades. T pulls out a notebook from the large armoire in the living room, and there are four copies – one for each in the family then – of a précis my dad put together of the Hundred Years’ War. My dad, the headmaster, the teacher….he thought the kids should know about the history of the place they’d be spending summers in. And here’s a list I put together in 1996 of technical terminology so I could deal with plumbers and masons and electricians and whatnot, scribbled on graph paper, almost six pages worth. And here’s my dad’s khaki work shirt hanging in a closet, paint-strewn, and the tubes of paint we used to stencil the armoire we put together from old garage doors back in 1997, and a book of lyrics to old French songs we used when my kids were in grade school, and a bathing suit of mine from when I was 45 pounds heavier, and guidebooks from the late 1990s, an old record of Dominique-nique-nique, a tin of pâté from Mme. L dating from 2000, and the water wings my now grown children used to paddle in the pool almost 15 years ago. The house is a reliquary, a museum. And what’s funny is, our time here is just a drop in the bucket. This house has been here for 120 years; a dwelling has been here for 300 years before that; mankind has been here for 25,000 years before that.

Tomorrow my daughter M arrives from California. T and I are bound and determined to have the place looking “respectable” when she gets here. We go to sleep under a cool, cloudy sky, late at night after an evening sitting on the wall reminiscing, with blisters on our fingers and bloody scratches on our arms and legs from fighting the garden elements all day. It’s lovely that there are no distractions here. Even though we have our laptops and iPods and iPhones and Blackberries and a CD player and somewhere in the house a TV that gets three channels, it never occurs to us to use them. We are already seduced by the simpleness of being here. We are bone weary and elementally happy. And so to bed in the black night.

Beautifully written, Mellen! I'm so enjoying this report and longing to return to the Dordogne.

StCriq,

I love your writing style, it makes it feel as if I am there with you. And oh, what would I give to have a Rosemary 'tree'!!! It is my favorite herb to cook with.

I look forward to reading about the family reunion.

Tom

For those who haven't visited, you can see some nice photos on the town by doing a simple image search...this one from Yahoo...but any search works:

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0geu6Q8s7JI5RIA0alXNyoA?ei=UTF-8&p=st cirq lapopie&fp_ip=FR&fr2=tab-web&fr=yfp-t-501-

Should help with imagining the area. Charming little town. In our little area (further south) today, it was another normal day...a neighbour dropped by to pick some flowers (for her brothers grave, as it is the 24th anniversary of his passing), someone left four perfect peaches hanging on our portail, another neighbour came by with 4 kilos of sanglier (about 9 pounds of freshly hunted wild boar) out of which we will make two different civets, the blackberries on the hill are ripe for making jam, and an 86 year old guy in our view was just finishing rebuilding a 12 foot high, 20 ft long, two foot thick retaining wall without any mortar, each stone placed and hammered and fitted. Should last another 100 years.

Who says nostalgia isn't what it used to be?! Vive la France profonde! Rouss

In fact, as StCirq will probably point out, she doesn't live in St Cirq Lapopie, the more famous village in the Lot, but in St Cirq du Bugue, in the Dordogne.

So, if searching images, it's better to search St Cirq , excluding 'Lapopie'

StCirq ~

> the entire house is like an album <

..captivating words.

I'm so enjoying this read, bookmarking and looking forward to the continuation.

Your report is so delightful StCirq!

We leave for France tomorrow and I hope it's as wonderful as your experience is. We're renting a gite for a couple of weeks, and trying to finally open a French bank account.

Some local villages are having fetes to celebrate the approaching vendange and we're going to join them at their meals. Going into the big city of Marseille also for their football game next Saturday!

Enjoy your family as they join you, and thanks for the beautiful description of your french home.

Enjoying your return home. . .

What a beautiful read. I should be working but... Sorry the interim years have been so rough, but how wonderful to have a place of peace to finally return to. Although I already see the place in my mind's eye, will there be any photos? - Another DC area resident.

Another kudos from another DC area fodorite also getting ready for France in a week.
Sounds like a gtg of great minds in Annapolis might be a good idea later in the Fall???

ttt

This is just delightful. I'm enjoying every word and am so looking forward to more "chapters".

I'm also reading M., and promise that some one of these days we'll get down to the Dordogne. A lot of water under the bridge since 1999, huh? I want to say, "Whatever happened to...?" (as in AOL France board) but I won't. We really haven't gotten any older have we?

Difficult to tell which is more enjoyable - the writing itself or the topic. Thank you so much for this.
"...bone weary and elementally happy" - now that just captures it perfectly.

And now Mellen, on to more beauty to unfold!

Oh goody! I didn't see much Fodor's over the weekend and need to go to bed now but look forward to reading this later!

"Some things never change, though – Dutch families with obscene numbers of offspring are cavorting around the store as though it were an amusement park, as always. I do appreciate the tolerance of the Dutch, but for the most part I’d like to give their unruly kids a good schwacking!"

, being Dutch I couldn't supress a smile while reading this. Dutch kids are indeed known as a bit unruly (even here in the Netherlands). Most Dutch parents don't believe in a very strict upbringing for their kids (I believe it has something to do with the 60's and 70's; freedom for all, including kids). But I do believe (as a parent of a 2 year old boy) that the last few years this is changing an little bit. Parents become stricter with their kids, partly also beacause of programs like 'Super Nanny' (and the Dutcht version of it).

One other thing; The Dutch really like the large French supermarkets and hypermarkets. In the Netherlands the supermarkets are generally rather small and thus is a vist to a French supermarket indeed a bit like a day in a amusement park!

Love reading your report though!

Dying to dawdle through the Dordogne ... delightful dreams ...

St. Cirq, I am really enjoying this. After all your help on this board, I hope you make 'oodles' from a book.

I'm so possessive and territorial, I think I would have just flipped out to find all the rocks fallen in my yard, the parking lot, etc.

Just a sensational report StCirq. I am looking forward to my trip to the Dordogne next year.

Keep writing

giggles and belly laughs at some parts, quiet understanding at others... thanks for the journey.
Will be looking for continuation...

Thanks StCirq - looking forward to your instalments

You will intimidate many with your trip report, St. Cirq.

I am leaving for Paris in November. Do you remember the name of the Thai restaurant that was near your hotel in Paris? If not, where is it located? Thanks.

Thin

I was really enjoying your post up until the point of the 'slurping perfectly ripe white nectarines' and then I think I lost consciousness! We were in your area in June of 2007, and I absolutely fell in love. Can't wait for more posts!

Fabulous trip report.. absolutely amazing. thank you for sharing with us St Cirq

We may have to wait abit. I see that Mellen is off to Nassau today for one night and a few days elswhere(Iforgt where someplace I'm not familiar with.
BUT BON VOYAGE!!

Sorry, folks, I took a Time Out to go to the Bahamas to see my daughter off to Semester at Sea....occasioning a whole new trip report about my misadventures there.

Will get back to this shortly, though...so many trip reports, so little time.....

Great report. Tagging.

Hi St Cirq, Hope Hannah and Ike didn't spoil your trip to the Bahamas. I would hate for that to prevent you from completing your trip report. I'm enjoying it and reading it carefully for ideas for a trip to France.

I love your reports! Thanks for making a bad day much better

T and I head to Périgueux late in the afternoon to pick up M at the train station. We’ve completed the first round of weeding and clearing, at least enough so we can sit along the wall and rest our feet. We’ve made all the beds and set out towels and stocked the pantry and the fridge, because not only is M arriving today, but sometime in the middle of the night the rest of the crew arrives – my BIL, his fiancée, her son, and three of my nieces and nephews. By morning, we’ll have a full house. The fullest house we’ve ever had, in fact.

And there’s M in front of the train station, book in hand as always, reading glasses perched on her nose, giving her a terribly studious air. Hugs, kisses, throw the bags in the car, and we’re off, and the dynamic instantly begins to change. T and I are alike in many ways, fairly quiet most of the time, pretty steady and predictable. But M is a fireball – noisy, funny, intense, happy, passionate. The car comes alive the minute she’s in it – music on a CD she’s brought, new jokes to share with her brother, funny tales galore about her plane and train rides. She keeps us amused throughout the drive, and before long we’ve stopped in front of the new Intermarché to get her reaction, which is OMG, then NO!! Wait until she sees the parking lot next to our house…

On the way up the hill to the house we come across Mme. L walking across the lane, my wonderful neighbor and friend, who has looked after our house since we bought it. Who brings us pâté with thick slices of black truffle and homemade wine and fresh eggs from her chickens and ducks. Who grows fluorescent geraniums the size of grapefruit. Whose impish smile and throaty laugh are infectious. Who always has the best gossip and isn’t afraid to share it. Who is one of the world’s premier ranters. Who is always coiffed and tidy in a blue print housedress and doesn’t miss a thing.

She shrieks when we stop the car and she realizes who we are. Comes running (on two replacement hips – she’s 87, I think) to the car window and reaches inside and grabs my face in her hands. A torrent of Occitan-French ensues…she thought she’d never see us again…..Oh My! Look how tall T is! And is that M? Oh My! Where have we been? She thought she’d never see us again! We won’t believe what is happening in the commune – have we seen the new grotte? Have we seen the sculpture? Have we seen Le Parking? Ooooh la la, so many changes in so short a time! All this punctuated, when she releases my face, with hand-wringing, nose-flipping, slaps on the car hood, and general chaotic animation. But beh! We must be tired, so run along and we’ll catch up later…and so we blow kisses and move on around the corner of her house. And M practically loses it when she sees the parking lot full of cars and the Toutes Directions sign, and the newly spruced up Grotte de St-Cirq. She is almost wailing.

And then there’s the rock. As you go by the grotte and up an incline to the entrance to our house, on the right is…well, was….an enormous mushroom-shaped piece of cliff, almost, but not quite, opposite our driveway. Probably 30 meters tall, it bulged out from the side of the cliff like a huge malignant growth. You see them all up and down the Vézère Valley, their tops studded with weed trees, their sides worn smooth with rain and moisture from within the cliffs. In order to pass by our house up the hill, you had to drive under the shadow of this monster rock, on a narrow lane hedged in on the left by the back of our house – the road literally runs right over the house. Only the mushroom rock fell down, or at least a massive bit of it did, about three months ago, blocking access to the lane that runs by our house for weeks. There are still boulders and debris all around, and what’s left of the rock is now held in place with enormous metal cables run between large stakes driven into the rock. It was an eerie sight when it was just natural – now it’s an eerie demolition site. And outside our driveway is a huge pile of splintered rock and boulder that has yet to be cleared away. It’s a good thing T and I cleared away most of the weeds and tidied up the house, because the fallen rock is almost more than M can bear. Funny how kids want everything to remain exactly as it was in their memories and have such trouble when the images change, even if they’re just superficial. To be fair, she’s come a very long way from California and hardly got any sleep the night before she left, but she’s a pretty crispy critter when she finally opens the door to the house.

Then, in an instant, all is good. She smells the woodsmoke odor that permeates the old stone, the furniture is all still there, her favorite bed is made up with her favorite kitschy blankets, the view out her bedroom window is relatively the same, since it’s too high up to be obscured by the trees, the cows are lowing as they always do before dusk when they’re herded back to the barns, the swallows are dipping over the pool, she’s home, and if it’s not quite perfect, it’s certainly serene and familiar.

One of the nifty things I’ve bought at the Bricomarché are a half-dozen solar torches – not those flimsy bamboo ones you see all over gardens in France, but some half-decent ones that are sturdy and really put out a good bit of light if you set them out in the strong sunlight during the day, which I have. M and T jump in the pool and catch up on brother-sister stuff while I put together a light supper of crudités and cornichons and cheese and pâté and ham and baguette for us. It’s still completely light at 7:30 pm, but when the sun goes down here, it’s pitch black unless there’s a moon. We have no streetlamps in St-Cirq. And the cousins are arriving in the middle of the night. So I place the solar torches on either side of the front door, and on either side of the driveway entrance, and two for good measure between the driveway and the door. They’ll illuminate things nicely in a Halloweenish way when night falls.

M hauls out the CD player, which frankly I’m amazed still works given the moisture issues we have here, but it does, and she’s brought, as usual, all kinds of varied and interesting music…Ethiopian, Brazilian, French, jazz, Zydeco…. T sets our simple dinner out on the picnic table under the linden tree, and we bring out beer and wine (and this just makes me feel ancient for a minute – drinking beer and wine with my kids, who started spending summers here when they were 5 and 2!) and munch and sip and reminisce. My kids, bless them, have an indomitable pluck and sense of humor, and have somehow come through some amazingly horrid stuff without losing that. M says “Remember how Dad was always telling us to go make friends….like when you were eating at a café and there were kids playing soccer, and he’d say “Go make friends with those kids…” and we were like “Whaaaat?” And she recalls a time when she was about 9 and T was about 6 and she dressed T up in one of her bathing suits and put his hair, which was fairly long at the time, in two little pigtails, and brought him out to the pool where their dad was sitting and introduced him as “Andrea…her parents are renting the Prieurie house down the road, and she doesn’t have any friends, and they don’t have a pool, so I thought I’d invite her up for the afternoon.” And Dad bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Hardly even looked up from the book he was reading except to take a few pictures of “Andrea,” which I still have. We are howling so hard at this we can hardly breathe, slap-happy, pounding the table with our fists….and M and T are then off with similar tale after tale of our early days here, good memories, not an ounce of bitterness or regretful reshaping of how things might have been…just pure memories of simpler times when we had loads and loads of good fun. As we are having now, still making memories…

And then when the sun goes down, we nap, for the cousins are coming from La Rochelle. Their plane lands at 9:30 pm, and they have to drive in the dark here. We expect them around midnight or one, and we know we’ll be up half the night. Wine, beer, gin and tonics at the ready, plus plenty of good middle-of-the-night food awaits.

The visual of T looking like Jim Carrey on SNL in the bikini and pigtails...priceless!

susanna: he really did look like Jim Carrey! That is hilarious!

Proenza, my intention is certainly not to intimidate anyone. Really, this stuff just comes rolling out of my brain onto the screen. I don't even edit it (well, for my publisher I do, but that's something else entirely). It's just my chronicling of what goes on and what I think as it does go on. Is all. Really. No intimidation at all....just hope it's a good read and a good think for a few folks.

StCirq, your writing delights, amuses, engenders thought (and maybe even a tiny bit of envy sometimes) but never intimidates. Please keep on writing! One day when there are awards for the best written posts you will carry home a truckload of "Fodies."

Love, love, love this!

Another wonderful chapter! Please keep them coming.

Oh StCirq it seems like ages since your first instalment. I've been checking daily to see if you've had time to add another chapter - thank you for such a wonderful read.

Can you tell me what is Occitan-French? A dialect??

Thanks, waiting with great excitement for the next instalment!

cathies:

Occitan is a language in its own right, not a dialect. My neighbors all speak it as their first language. But when they speak to foreigners like me they speak French...or try to. It's heavily doused with bits of Occitan, though. So, for example, when they talk about "bread," they will often say "lou pan" instead of "le pain," just to use a simple example. And their accent in French is very strong, like that of provençal speakers, so that "matin" becomes" "mataaaiiiing" and "vin" becomes "vaaiing." It took me ages to get used to it, but I'm OK with it now, though I respond in regular French.

St. Cirq, for as much time as I've spent on this site, somehow I've never read one of your reports before. Now I know why you have such a devoted following. Count me in. This is wonderful. I'm enjoying it all, especially your reactions to drinking with your grown children. I've always enjoyed my children more the older they got and being able to have a glass of wine with them is one of my all time favorite milestones.

Looking forward to more--and to the book.

StCirq: Really, this stuff just comes rolling out of my brain onto the screen. I don't even edit it...

Yeah. That's what I like about it.

Most folks, their trip reports could use a lot more editing. Yours are so in-the-moment, so experiential, that their "rambling" quality only adds to the flavor and the texture.

The fact that I've been to your little hamlet allows me to picture it all (at least somewhat) in my mind's eye.

So, keep going. Please.

Occitan is a language in its own right, not a dialect. My neighbors all speak it as their first language.

This issue has arisen before. So I asked some local residents in my (how I hate the possessive in this instance) local hamlet in the Périgord vert. These are individuals in their sixties and seventies. Sometimes their parents spoke the patois (their term) with each other, but French with their children, so that the children (now retired) understand the patois but cannot speak it. Some even claimed that people in adjoining villages could not understand each other when they used their own patois. As a standardized language, Occitan is a re-creation of the 19th and 20th century. One of its main proponents lived in Mussidan and I believe was instrumental in reviving the félibrée.

Michael:

My neighbors, mostly in their 80s and 90s, also call it patois. I believe they have been conditioned to do that. My understanding is that it is a true language, not a patois or dialect, but that within the Occitan language are several dialects - Langedocien, provençal, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean be "a recreation." It's been around a lot longer than the 19th century. Fédéric Mistral was responsible for making it known to a relatively wide circle, and for publishing his poetry in it.

There is a bournat in Les Eyzies that is pretty active. And Occitan is taught in some schools, and by a fair number of private teachers, throughout the Périgord Noir. I can't speak to other regions in the Périgord. The Félibrée is becoming more and more popular every year. It's similar to what has been happening with Breton over the past few decades.

Mistral wrote in Provençal, not Occitan. The formal general language pretty much disappeared, what remained were local patois. Provençal was revived (perhaps a better term than re-creation) by Mistral and others. Occitan was revived by others in southwestern France.

Eons ago I took a French linguistics course from Professor Juan Corominas who knew all the Romance language dialects and admitted to having some difficulties with obscure Romanch (sp?) and Auvergnat versions. He never mentioned Occitan as a continuing language (that was before the 70s burst of Occitan nationalism) but did teach us how to read medieval langue d'oc and the Chanson de Roland which precedes the written distinction between langue d'oc and langue d'oïl.

Well, not that a website is to be substituted for actual facts, but what this one describes meshes with what I have learned over quite a few years about the Occitan language. Note it talks about provençal as well.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/occitan.htm

Your writing is magical and transports me to all that you are describing. I can't even wait to continue reading more and more, thank you.

Except for the role of Mistral in reviving Occitan (and I still think that Provençal was his real interest), nothing contradicts what I said. On the contrary, the article states that the langue d'oïl became the written language and that it is only in the late 19th century that individuals started standardizing Occitan. As to its existence in Spain, I doubt it, although I am not familiar with those local dialects. The easily accessible areas of Spain from France would have been Catalan and Basque (Roussillon is Catalan in local speech, as is Andorra) and Corominas, he who would get very angry if one stated that Catalan was a dialect of Spanish, would be spinning in his grave at the idea that it could be considered part of the Occitan languages. I'll let others decide if Spanish Navarre spoke Occitan.

Michael: Linguistics has long been a fascination of mine, as well. I'm finding my interest and curiosity piqued by this "old language" vs. "revived patois" analysis of Occitan, Provencal, etc.

But may I suggest a separate thread for this discussion? It seems to be stepping in the way of the narrative of this thread, I think.

Just a thought.

Moonless midnight, fresh-scented breeze wafting through the shutters, star formations high above casting wavy gossamer shadows, cuckoos calling, the tttsssssssssiiiiinnnngg of cicadas in the trees, a lone dog howling….and my inner clock awakens me as engines hum and die in the driveway. I’ve always had an “inner clock,” as well as an “inner compass.” I guess because my woodsman headmaster father used to drop me in the woods as a child and make me find my way out. “Here you are,” he’d say, handing me water and a compass and a bar of chocolate. “I’ll see you back at camp at 4 pm.” And he’d take off down some leafy path and disappear. When I was maybe 8 years old. I wasn’t afraid at all. I knew what to look for: mica formations, slippery rocks, sassafrass plants, laurel bushes with leaves chewed off at the level of the head of this animal or that, footprints of deer and smaller animals, one hoped not bigger ones like bear, though they were in the woods, too. I knew what to listen for, too: the burble of water, the wind going this way or that, the rattle of a snake’s tail….although a city kid, I grew up in the wild every summer, with a mountain-climbing, nature-loving dad who taught me all about trees and bushes and animals and weather and rocks and how to be safe and protect myself and how to hide and be silent and how to get from here to there and how to read the sky and the stars as well as Chaucer and Shakespeare. And I ate it up. No wonder I feel at home in this blackness that is the middle of the night in the Périgord. No wonder I laugh at GPS systems. No wonder I think alarm clocks are superfluous.

I told myself when I lay down to nap around 10 pm to wake around midnight, and so I did. And not long after, the muffled motors of my in-laws toddled up the hill of St-Cirq and landed in my driveway. M and T, of course, are long solidly asleep, not having been blessed with the Indian-like upbringing of their mother. When they go to sleep, they sleep. They don’t wake up without electronics or a good kicking. No matter, the cousins and collateral are soon on our doorstep and at least Aunti M is there for hugs and welcomes and thanks for a safe arrival at the dark doorway with the single lightbulb illuminating the doorstep. I’m amazed that the solar torches got them here from the end of the driveway, but they did.

Cousins and collateral are noisy, though. It’s been 13 years since they were here, those cousins, and they are an emotional lot to begin with, and much has happened that is too sad to recall, so there are lots of instant moments of remembrance that bring forth tears and hugs. M and T appear zombie-like as I am pouring the ice into gin and tonics, and another round of hugs and tears ensues. It’s almost too cinematic, this moment – middle of the night, 13 years hence, the same faces…and really scarily, as M points out, the very exact same hairdos on both nieces, rendering them exact replicas in the middle of this black night in front our cavernous fireplace, of themselves when they were 8 and 5 years old….only their mother is gone now, their father here with his new love, soon to be wife….and I’m here still the same St-Cirq lady who fell in love with this place 17 years ago and shared it with the entire dysfunctional family, only now I’m here alone for this part of the trip, as Old Auntie M, still the crazy lady, still the wild card, still the adventuress, still the person you come to when you’re lost in the woods or don’t know what time it is. Still crazy after all these years……

We settle down a bit after a drink and a shared moment “on the wall” and agree that tomorrow we’ll regroup and have a lazy day getting grounded here and getting our bearings. It’s a given that we’ll all go to Fauqué’s for a chocolat liègois and that we’ll make a massive trip to the Intermarché to provision ourselves and that we’ll take stock of what needs to be done to make the property look decent again – particularly to get back our view of the valley.We might even venture forth and see if we can see something like a tourist venue - but we all agree that’s not tops on the list. We have our own tourist unit right here.

I can’t even find a word to describe the softness of this wee early-morning gathering…how a half-dozen disparate “family” members arrive in a hamlet deep in the Dordogne in the middle of the night and find each other again. I mean, various members of this crowd have seen each other from time to time over the years and we’re all in touch sporadically, but for us all to collide together on this cool starlit evening, even though we planned it, seemed shockingly wonderful. How do you describe a family reconnected in a remote village in the middle of the night after a decade of heartbreak and disconnection and death and destruction? We did the best we could. We had a drink and put our feet up on the wall and then called it a night. And thanks to T, who knows instinctively that this is a two-pillow family, everyone had clean sheets and two pillows, and every bed in my big old house in St-Cirq was filled, and everyone exhausted and happy-sad and, I guess, slept, as the French say, like bones.

I was up at about 8 am and showered and roamed around a bit. And here comes M, my amazing daughter, ready to make breakfast for the whole crew. She’s been at Berkeley for 3 years, on the lacrosse team, and living in a group home and making momma’s recipes for all her teammates for all that time. She loves to cook and she’s ready to go. I give her eggs and potatoes and onions and she’s off…….I make coffee. We wait for the rest of the household to waken. The sun gets off hot at first, but there are clouds in the sky and it looks like maybe a sultry, rainy day. T comes downstairs and wants a big cup of coffee. He likes his in a bowl the way the French do. It’s funny to have a 18-year-old kid who likes coffee in a bowl, I guess, but I dunno, I think my life is stranger than most people’s so I don’t get hung up on stuff like that. Bit by bit the relatives straggle down, until we have a full complement, sitting on chairs by the wall’s edge, M in the kitchen whipping up a bunch of scrambled eggs and potatoes fried in goose fat. Before you know it we have a complement of 11 folks, most related in one way or another, sitting on the terrace in front of the house “wallin’ it.” I am tired. I am happy. I am sittin’ happy in my old stone house in France with my kids with me and my nieces and nephews and looking forward to a great day in the Périgord.

St Cirq

What a fabulous trip report. I feel like I'm there. We went 8 yrs ago and I would love to go back.

I met you and your lovely family 7 yrs ago at a small restaurant in Normandy. I'd lost my credit card, probably dropped in a little military museum. We were trying to buy a phone card but the restaurant proprietor told us that we would have to wait until tomorrow, the shops that sold them were closed. You overheard us and offered a phone card to use. So sweet. As we started talking, I put the connection together and realized that you were St. Cirq!! I'd used your directions to Mont St. Michele on that trip. Small world! So it makes this lovely travelogue even more sweet. Can't wait to read your book!

When you posted earlier this year that you would be in the Dordogne and would like to arrange a get-together, I remember wishing I could be there. Now I feel like I was.

Hi, ellenbw.

Gosh, that seems like a lifetime ago, but I remember it well. It was at Le Petit Normand in Bayeux. Small world, indeed! Nice to hear from you....

StCirq, what a gift you have!

The reunion of family in a special place - I have also felt that and therefore identify with your description so well. Different place (not quite so amazing) but still special.

St.Cirq,

Please continue your report! Can't wait to hear more.

Coming later today...I've been busy getting ready to leave for India! Can't even imagine what that trip report will entail!

Mieux vaut tard que jamais, non?

You just don’t know how strong the bonds of family are until they’ve been wrestled to the ground, torn apart, ripped asunder, and tentatively reassembled. And here we are, reassembled, on this soft, gray, spitting-rain late morning in St-Cirq - a gaggle of bleary, jet-lagged, beautiful young folks straggling down the stairs, and myself, “the matriarch – OMG!” - and my BIL and his fiancée hovering around the kitchen catching up on, well, years of gossip and history and remembrances – good, funny, sad, tragic, inspiring – all over big bowls of coffee with sweet cream for those who like it.

It’s an undertaking, getting 9 people up and running in a foreign country, with all of them having converged from different parts of the world. We greet the day late – around 11 am – at The Wall, that focal point of our property. We can hear the zzzzzmmmmm of tractors and an outburst of motorcycle now and then, and from down the lane the occasional slamming of a car door and the muted buzz of conversation as visitors arrive at the Grotte de St-Cirq. But we can't see anything because we are encased in trees and hedges. My kids, who have been here countless times, are just lolling on The Wall. The cousins, who haven’t been here since 1995, are tapping into distant memories of the place, tinged with both beautiful and exceptionally sad memories. They are checking out drawers and chests and remembering how we actually built together the enormous armoire in the living room – from a huge old door we found in the garage. Someone remembers how my nephew spent hours playing with the enormous beetles with pincers – coaxing them to walk up and down sticks. And then he’d dump them in the pool. We all remember the hedgehog that was swimming frantically around the perimeter of the pool one morning – we rescued it and took it to the top of the hill where we thought it would be safe. In between these sudden recalls of moments from long ago everyone wanders around a bit in the dewy morning a bit dazed, finding a space to call his own in this place.

We don’t have much planned today, as the guests are all exhausted. We’ll go to Limeuil for lunch, poke around, check out Le Bugue, make another trip to the Intermarché, and then my BIL and I will hit the Bricomarché for a big run – he is intent on clearing the “lower forty” so we can regain our view of the valley. We have three cars, and that alone is a bit of a chore, as it’s August in the Dordogne and roads and sites and parking lots are crowded. But everyone in this family has a stellar sense of direction, so once we have downed the coffee and some have had some cereal, we load up the three cars, and head to Limeuil.

It’s an interesting town. It was truly awful when we first bought the house, with ancient sewage troughs that still emptied right into the river Dordogne. It smelled. It was clearly a medieval gem, but apart from a couple of shops and a glassblower – who is still there – it was not a good showing for a tourist town. All that has changed, and it’s now, as are so many towns, overrun because of its gorgeous hilltop position, its beach at the confluence of the Dordogne and Vézère rivers, its “elbow bridge” that spans the two of them, with a sharp turn halfway over, its lovely views. We actually all end up there at about the same time and sit ourselves down at Le Chai, which is one of my kids’ favorite places to eat in the region. It’s a simple place, serving salads and carpaccios and really good half-burnt, thin-crust pizza, but the kicker is they have something like 125 kinds of ice creams and sorbets, including flavors like saffron and cardamom and rose and violet and ginger and nettle…you get the idea. You can have these as a sort of “trou Normand” in the middle of your meal, or as dessert. We order pizzas and salads of mozzarella and tomato and basil, with everything as fresh as can be at the height of the summer, and before you know it we are passing plates around like insane people – here, try a bit of this; here, you have to taste this; please please have some of my fries….the sun has come out, and there are canoers arriving in droves to take off from the port here, and there are kittens lounging on the restaurant chairs, and the wait staff is slow, but we are all easing so fluidly into this group that we are…

We walk up the steep cobblestone alley that leads to the top of the town, now lined with expensive jewelry shops and renovated homes owned by Brits with a lot of money to spare for second homes. We stop in one shop and the owner is suddenly overwhelmed by my daughter and her two cousins all wanting to try on rings and hats and purses and skirts all at once. She is sharp, worried about attending to us while other customers might be stealing things from her. But when she finds out we are family and several of us speak French, she relaxes….take your time, Madame…I’ll let you look at this box of extras while I deal with the next customer. M buys a gold ring. She usually likes silver, but the owner convinces her that blondes look better in gold (I was happier when she liked silver). Then my niece spots a gold ring she wants, too, and also being blonde, is convinced by the owner it’s perfect for her. She has no money with her. I buy it for her, along with the one for M, because she is lovely and my niece and I want her to have something to remember this day by. It’s not expensive. They’re pretty rings, by a local artisan, but not going to break the bank.

So we haul ourselves to the top of the hill in Limeuil, and at the summit everyone says “Why?” And I’m not sure. There’s a lovely panorama of the Dordogne valley below, with walnut groves and strawberries maturing inside white net covers, but they’re right – it’s not that inspiring, and so we descend. This, by the way, is one amazingly steep climb. And it’s all cobblestones. Going down, as always, is much worse than going up. You really feel as though you are going to fall flat on your face…you know that feeling of almost falling on your face, even if you have good walking shoes on? This is worse than that. You are just propelled downward and have to use your hips to stop your downward movement. All the way down the girls are talking about getting married, and I’m all ears, thinking what can young women be thinking about this? And it’s a shocker…one of them says “ Can you just imagine that you’ve already met the guy you’re going to marry?” And the others say “ No way, you’d know by now…” And then M says “ But my mom’s living with a guy she was in love with in high school, and they’re like this amazing couple,” and the others say “ Well, that’s not normal…” And M says “Well, nothing’s normal in my family, but he’s really cool guy and my mom’s really happy,” and one niece says “But isn’t it funny the way you go out with a guy and the minute you do, if it’s a good date, you’re thinking about how you’d look on your wedding day with him?” And I’m thinking at this point that I want to just die, for the sake of the women’s movement, for the sake of the poor BIL and my son and the two other young men who are traipsing down this hillside with us, for the sake of all men everywhere, frankly.

The kids and fiancé go home in two cars and BIL and nephew and I head to the Bricomarché to buy a chain saw. It’s just astonishing how big the new store is – aisle after aisle of DIY stuff, à la française, and an official “greeter” at the entrance. Gone are the young “Brico Boys” we used to ogle at. Gone is the pesky, sexy, irritable Jeanette, the Bricobitch who used to torment us. Now there is a whole new complement of temperate middle-aged employees who seem genuinely to want to help (though none speaks English…which is fine. I think shopping at the Bricomarché more than doubled my French vocabulary!). There is an entire aisle of chain saws! We ask for help, and a fellow with more mustache than face comes to our aid. Like so many French people I’ve encountered in stores like this, he wants to do much more than make a sale. He wants to get into details. He wants to plumb the experience we will be having as a result of him making the sale. He wants to know what kind of trees we have. How tall they are. How full. On what kind of terrain. He wants to know what experience we’ve had with chain saws (hah!). He wants a vision of what we will do with this piece of equipment and how it will make our lives better. He’s precise, and kind, and wise, and demonstrative, taking the various saws out of their boxes and handling them and showing us exactly what does what. On his recommendation, we purchase a mid-priced one and BIL announces it is his present to us for inviting his family to StCirq. Lovely. Actually, says BIL, the present isn’t the saw, the present will be the regained view….

At home the girls are making couscous with chicken and carrots and zucchini and onions and chickpeas and raz-al-hanout and harrissa, and you can smell it from the driveway. We open a couple of bottles of Pécharmant and set the table under the linden tree for a last evening with No View. It’s a cool and breezy night…sweaters in August! The girls serve up their Moroccan masterpiece and we spend a full two hours at the table. When finally night falls we head inside and play charades. Nine people laughing and shouting on a hillside in an otherwise silent patch of land. I wonder what the neighbors think.

I am loving your story.
Can't wait to hear if your view opens up.

Mellen, thanks so much for more of your beautifully written report!

We came across Limeuil unexpectedly and quite unaware on our Dordogne trip. Seeing a sign for a Most Beautiful Village of France on our way to Tremolat, site of the film Le Boucher, we detoured uphill into town, parked at the top and wandered happily through the streets, admiring the restored homes and envying the owners. Unfortunately, the best view of the confluence of the two rivers is owned by the Panorama Park but we did catch worthwhile glimpses.

We enjoyed Le Bugue too and its great market and helpful tourist office with internet facilities. We can completly understand why you chose your lovely little hamlet nearby and wanted to regain that marvelous view from the top of the hill.

Hi, St. Cirq. Just wanted to say that your description of mustache-man, the helpful sales guy at the Bricomarché, is resonating with me today. I’m in the midst of writing a training script for retail sales associates, and my emphasis is squarely on the fundamentals. (Discover the customer’s needs by asking questions. Explain benefits, not just features. Show, don’t just tell. Etc.) This guy already took the course, apparently.

Lovely report. Onward (please)!

Thank you for continuing. This is so enjoyable.

M -
Your writing is especially appreciated in this time of financial uncertainty. For the price of a bit of electricity to power this machine I get a vicarious vacation. Merci bien, madame, et bon voyage a l'Inde.

Am continuing to enjoy your report so very much. Thank you.

Thanks so much, all of you. I'll try to write more as I wing my way around the world later this week. I should have plenty of long-haul flights to get my thoughts organized!

St Cirq,

I get the flavor of so much unsaid-unreported.

From one woman to another, I'm happy for you.

For you that have been following StCirq's posts, and anxiously waiting the ending of this one, she is currently in India. I STRONGLY suggest you go over to the Asia board to follow her really fascinating trip report, "My First Passage to India".

It is a wonderful read!

Thanks nukesafe-will do.

I have checked & checked for additions to the Deliciously Dysfunctional Dorgogne report since last October. It was such a treat -- almost as good as being there! Anyhow, I'm still wondering what the neighbors think! Will this become a book I can buy? It should.

Hopefully, I will enjoy my third visit to the Dordogne in late September. Just can't get it out of my system!

May we please have the rest of the story...

Ahh St. Cirq, it has been an age since I read one of your wonderful Dordogne trip reports. There is something particularly poignant about you cutting your way through the tangled overgrowth to find your beloved house again. It reminds me of “Sleeping Beauty’ )

Can we expect more soon?

Best … Ger

Oh boy would I love to finish up ALL my trip reports, but this is "crunch time" at work for me until the fiscal year ends for most of my clients on June 30, and I'm already working almost 24/7. Maybe after that I'll take a week off and just do trip reports!

But then, I'll be headed to the Dordogne at the end of July again, so will have to do ANOTHER one?

Aren't there any ghost writers out there willing to pitch in?