Hi Stu

Ten days of little but errands and chasing workmen down and fixing cell phone issues and talking to real estate agents and driving to La Rivière for Wifi and showers and laundry, and we are ready for just a wee bit of sightseeing. I can’t imagine having dragged SO here and not having him get to enjoy some of the sights. We’ve given up on Font-de-Gaume, made at least four trips there to talk to folks, all of whom give us contradictory information, and twice SO has driven in at the times they suggested only to find out the day’s tour is full or there is no English-language tour. If I could start a business management business here, I’d surely do it – but no doubt it would spoil the region’s charm, which is in good part based on unpredictability, lack of specifics, and a laissez-faire mindset that is deeply ingrained and charming unless you actually have a plan and want to get something done quickly. The general feeling is, it’s YOU who need to relax and get with the slow pace and maddening inconsistencies, not WE who need to speed up and fulfill your wishes. Have a glass of wine, have some foie gras, sit by the river, enjoy the view…life is good and you’ll be fine. Ne vous inquiétez pas.

So SO goes to see the Grotte du Sorcier next door and loves it. Even though it’s not a major cave, it’s a UNESCO site and very well known by paleontologists, as it has one of the few engravings of a human form in the Vézère Valley. The tour is in French, but SO says he got most of it, except some of the technical information on the various levels of sediment. And then we pack a picnic, using the handy cold pack from La Rivière, and head to Limeuil. I want him to see some of the lovely villages that are all around us, and so far, we’ve mostly stayed at the house or gone to Le Bugue and Les Eyzies, It doesn’t seem fair not to share some of the wonders around us in our brief time here. And besides, it’s the mid-day break and we can’t accomplish anything anyway. On the way, we stop at St-Martin, a Romanesque chapel built in 1194 by Henri II’s son Richard I, to expiate the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a’ Becket: http://www.pays-de-bergerac.com/engl...euil/index.asp. The doors of the church are closed tight, as are most around here – religious attendance by Catholics in this and other rural French regions has dwindled to the point where local chapels , which means most of the Romanesque churches, have only itinerant priests, who come by once every few months to perform a service. Otherwise, the chapels are locked and inaccessible these days. If there’s a wedding or funeral, there’s an exception ,and everyone in the village shows up. A real indication of how typical local life has died out here in the rural SW of France, though there are indications of a reversal of the trend for young people to flee to the cities, We have a chapel in St-Cirq, right below the southernmost limits of my property, and it’s locked most of the time , too, but when there’s a wedding or funeral, the bells ring out loud and clear and will shake your bones and get you running down the hill to see what’s happening.

So, the Chapelle StMartin Is a no-go, except that there’s a huge garbage depot right next to it, and we happen to have all the old clothes I want to discard in bags in the car, so we leave them there, hoping they’ll make their way to some charitable outfit associated with the church.
Then, a short hop to Limeuil. Always a gorgeous geographical site, it was a mess when I first bought the house in St-Cirq, wtrh a literally Medieval sewer system that was interesting to view from a historical perspective, but that still shunted personal household sewage down gutters from the hilltop town into the Vézère.The first time I was there, in 1994, I ventured out into the river water and found a wallet with 500 francs in it, no doubt lost by some canoer. The place smelled back then. Today it is fairly glorious, with all sewage issues resolved and a host of decent restaurants and shops. Too commercial for my taste, in general, but still a nice town, like Domme. It’s at the confluence of the rivers Dordogne and Véz1ere, and has an elbow bridge – half of it goes over the Vézère and half over the Dordogne. You don’t see elbow bridges all that often, but it’s pretty cool.

There are picnic tables galore near the main parking lot at the bottom of Limeuil, so we park and find one and set out our goodies. I give SO the digital camera, assure him that I’m fine to be alone for awhile, and off he goes. I’m feeling good because it’s another beautiful day, and SO more than deserves some time to himself to explore without his gimpy,plodding partner.

While I sit there, a French couple install themselves at a nearby table, and while they are unpacking their picnic an American couple comes along and asks if they can share the table.Bien sûr, say the French couple, and before long they are chatting,, with the Americans struggling in horribly accented miserable French, which the French of course accept without criticism. The thrust of the conversation is the American guy’s allegiance to Romney, which obviously puts off the French couple instinctively… you can see them shuffling food about on their plates and shifting eye rolls at each other, but they remain polite and ask few questions and then take that stand-offish stance that the French are so good at, and eventually the garrulous, bad-French-speaking couple slink off to who knows where. When the French couple pack up and go by me on their way to the parking lot, I engage them and tell them that we Americans are not all supporters of Romey , the Tea Party, or other extremists, and we aren’t all monolinguiists. They looked so happy!

Then a family of New Zealanders wanted to share my table because there were no free ones. By this time I was wondering what had happened to SO, so company was welcome. Turns out they were here for a huge marathon near Bordeaux (all the way from New Zealand?? Wow.

SO had a great time trekking up to the top of Limeuil, with a break from his gimpy partner, and came back ready to rip into our picnic – which was excellent and supplemented by a rose ice cream at Le Chai, my favorite place for ice cream/sorbet in all of France as I know it,

Cigale, I didn't know that. Will have to look it up. Thank you!

DebitNM, can picture you in the gîte in Provence with pangs of ency and thank you for the kind words. That rooftop was almost, but not quite, equivalent to "walling it" at the place in St-Cirq.

I was in Italy last week and sharing a table with two American couples each of whom were strangers to each other. As the final couple sat down he introduced himself and launched into a rant in favour of Mr Romney.

We rolled out eyes (being British it all looks like an asterix cartoon "the americans are mad") but the guy goes on as his compatriots just go very silent and stare into the distance. Seems that the Americans spend a lot of money buying political positions and sometimes they use public money and sometime they get given money and sometimes other people use money to say what they want and how Romney knows how to tell people what to do. Finally this couple goes and the there is a short ripple of ironic clapping from all the people at our end of the restaurant. The couple near us then say how sorry we had to see this behaviour.

I felt your pain.

Occasionally I've had luck finding the keeper of the keys or the gardien to locked churches by asking at the nearest house.

Our village church is of no particular significance, sort of bog-standard, cookie-cutter from around 1880 with a few older bits inside. The women across the road who holds the keys lets people in for a look.

Thanks for including some touristy stuff, must get back up there.

What is your opinion on discussing politics with the French? I don't unless they start the conversation. Before the recent French presidential election, the neighbors were interested in our views. Husband can vote in local elections only, I have no vote.

Yes, there is usually someone with keys to a church - in St-Cirq it's probably the mairie, but St-Martin is in a field fairly far from town, and it would be hard to guess which farm to stop at to inquire about keys. It was interesting to walk around the graveyard outside though - so many ancient stones and all those funerary trinkets the French are so fond of.

As for politics, I never initiate conversations about American politics, though I might about French politics if something stirring were in progress. But quite a number of times I've witnessed Americans launching political discussions, especially with French people who speak English. Normally, the French are reserved in such situations, just acknowledging the comments without engaging. In this case, the French couple spoke very minimal English, and the American spoke minimal French, to the point where really all he could get out, time and time again was "Obama a tout l'argent, tout l'argent!" and "Obama veut acheter tout. C'est pourquoi j'aime Romney...parce que il ne pense pas qu'il peut acheter tout." Even if the French couple had wanted to engage, it would have been hard to launch a conversation from this premise, given the language limitations. And I had no intention of engaging them myself, but when leaving they walked by my table and asked if I had someone coming for me (lady alone at picnic table with crutches elicited this reaction from several people) and when I said thank you but I'm fine,just waiting for someone, they mentioned that they had heard SO and me speaking English earlier, and there certainly were a lot of English speakers in this neck of the woods (turns out they were visiting from Alsace). I did take that opportunity to say something like, well, we are definitely English speakers, but unlike the last ones you spoke with, we're not Romney fans, which drew a big grin from the two of them.

I remember being in Provence right after we invaded Iraq and being questioned by quite a few French people about the justification for that. In fact, throughout W's presidency there was a lot more back-and-forth in general - with my neighbors as well as people met along the course of my travels - about American politics. Nearly every French person I conversed with then was utterly opposed to the American presence in Iraq and not hesitant to talk about it, once they had started the conversation and realized I supported the same position.

But generally speaking, I don't bring up American politics, even with my neighbors, unless directly asked for an opinion. They'd rather talk about food and their pensions, anyway.

"rather talk about food and their pensions...."

Agree, perfect!

Very much enjoying this story, StCirg, particularly I've also recently gotten rid of some unpleasant excess baggage.

I've jumped to the bottom of the thread to mention something that you might find helpful for the remainder of your convalascence: a knee walker. You use it instead of crutches, and while it won't help much with brushy fields and stairs (the tush works just fine, I find) it is a tremendous improvement when it comes to roads, sidewalks, and interior spaces. Great exercise as well, as it keeps your derriere and hip muscles working hard (but spares your wrists and armpits).

I think the last poll they took in France about support for Obama turned out to be something like 88% so this should be a warning to any Romney people who want to talk politics in France for the next 5 weeks.

Thanks for the tip, Therese. I wish I'd known about it before the trip. As it is, in the week that I've been home I've been able to abandon the crutches and hobble around without them, just a brace on the ankle. If I ever do this again (and I'd better not!), I'll remember the knee walker, though.

Something that makes this thread stand out is how well it conveys the thrill of being somewhere you love with someone you love, and somehow good things just keep happening.

I kept my own diary of our recent trip, and even though I felt that thrill, I can't write it. You have a special touch.

Great news re your progress to hobbling status, StCirq. I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of my knee walker, as I've been able to loan mine to lots of friends (and friends of friends).

Nice sentiments, Coquélicot, and definitely true. Thank you.

After leaving Limeuil, we drive a short ways back to a "bière artisanale" sign we've seen on the road just before entering town, but it's closed, as are SO many things, but by now we've just learned to accept our fate and press on. Minor disappointments are just par for the course. In this case to Le Buisson, because Monsieur Vialenc has suggested his colleague and fellow antiquaire/brocanteur Monsieur Baillon who has a shop there may also be interested in acquiring some of my household possessions.

Le Buisson is another practical non-touristed town about 8 kms from Le Bugue, not pretty at all, just an SNCF station and the usual bunch of hairdressers, patisseries, boulangers, a boucherie, a café or two, a hardware store, a maison de la presse, a retirement home, one rather unkempt park with public parking around it - just plain ordinary (but all the more endearing for that, once one has sucked in the overwhelming stunningness of so many other towns). And it's Le Buisson-de-Cadouin, which means that it's a commune of the village of Cadouin, which has one of the most spectacular abbeys in the Dordogne, and well worth visiting. Go see it if you are visiting the region!

I don't know Le Buisson all that well - really, only because it has the only gas station that's open on Sundays that is manned - but there are really only two streets through it. But there is no antiquaire or brocante on either of them, so we stop at the Maison de la Presse, which is about the only thing open at 3 pm, and ask. The lady there thinks there may be a brocante on the main road heading to St-Cyprien, so we head out that way, but we are soon on a main road, and I have a mental picture of what lies ahead because I've been on this road a lot, and I know it's unlikely to take us past a brocante. So we turn around, and after a few minutes, upon heading right back into Le Buisson, I spot a tiny little sign saying brocante, which takes us down a few winding lanes, hither and yon, and deposits us in front of a stunning, huge house with a...parking lot! Maybe for about 12 cars, but still...houses in the Périgord don't usually have parking lots. The parking lot fronts onto a gorgeous lawn and garden with lovely statuary and topiary - very fancy for such an out-of-the-way place in a nondescript town.

Next to the parking lot is a barn with a sign that says Baillon on it, and a bell and another sign that says Sonnez! So we ring the bell, and around a corner of the property comes M. Baillon. He's maybe 40, tall and a bit portly and with a rather suppressed air, sort of nonchalant and uncommitted. Maybe he was just surprised at two Americans showing up amid his parking lot and statues and topiary, but we explain that M. Vialenc has suggested we stop by, and his demeanor takes on a half a degree higher interest. After a lot of questions about what I have to sell, and what M. Vialenc has already bought (because his business head is in the game even if his friendliness quotient isn't), he agrees he will stop by tomorrow night, and I give him directions and the phone number.

Back home we see the vast improvements that Franck has made in clearing out the property, and somewhat giddy we get out some goat cheese and olives and baguette and wine and a bucket of warm water for me to soak my foot in, and SO says "You can't give this place up. There has to be another way." He's fallen under the spell, and I'm beginning to think he's right - there must be another way. It's beginning to be VERY hard for me to contemplate letting go of this place. And we talk about this a lot this night.

But we must proceed with practicalities. M. Vialenc comes by as agreed at 7 pm, such a jolly, garrulous man, and we let him wander through the house and collect a few items. He's judicious - his shop space is small and he only wants a few fairly high-quality items. Fine. When he's done and written me a check, he's sits with us by the wall and talks for an hour about how he ended up in the Périgord, a Parisian boy who still loves the city but couldn't make a go of it there, who decided to come to the southwest and raise geese for foie gras. Did that for a number of years, raised a family, then got into the antiques business as he recognized the burgeoning market for wealthy Brits and other expats. But in fact his wealthiest and best clients turned out to be French families who had inherited properties in the region which they wanted to upkeep or restore. Had three shops 20 years ago, now only one. Things have gotten tougher, but he still loves the Périgord, and he still loves Paris. He gets animated when he talks about Paris; he talks about how vibrant and multicultural it is compared to here and how his heart just sings the moment he arrives there. He glows when he talks about this, and of course we get it because we get the same glow.

Then he tells us about his son, who's in Dublin in some managerial position doing very well, and he goes into a mild rapture about Ireland, and I explain that I have Irish citizenship but have never (hide my head in shame) been to that country. You must go! he exclaims. He's been to Ireland a number of times, and he says the Irish, compared to the French, have culture defined. They live for music, art, literature, all the things that the French do, but the Irish do it better and without any veneer or pretention, and they do it in an atmosphere of fellowship that the French just don't cultivate. This is absolutely fascinating to me and SO, as I have NO experience in Ireland and SO has some but not much, and neither of us is in a position to make this kind of evaluation. Just another world viewpoint of one brocanteur in the Périgord - but isn't it all these conversations we have in the course of our travels that enrich our minds and make us think of things we never thought of before? And that so many of these can happen on a hillside in the deepest depths of the Périgord just reaffirms my faith in mankind. And frankly astounds me.

I don't remember what we did after M. Vialenc left. I suppose I soaked my foot and we "walled it" until the stars came out, and eventually went to a cuddly bedtime in our cocoon, but boy, we had a lot to talk about that night. It's astonishing how much one can learn in one day.

Reading this is like watching a birth. Pain and stress, but a wonderful beginning filled with astounding possibilities.

I see La Rochelle fading away..

Based on your photos and your wonderful prose, I think you have a gem--I mean the house but would guess SO qualifies as well.

Don't stop!

Another injured foot traveler who has read -- or at least scanned -- your non-trip report. Glad you are getting such pleasure writing it up and re-living it, but when you wrote...

"but isn't it all these conversations we have in the course of our travels that enrich our minds and make us think of things we never thought of before? And that so many of these can happen on a hillside in the deepest depths of the Périgord just reaffirms my faith in mankind. And frankly astounds me--"

I can't help but say: When your foot gets better, you should get out more! There's a whole world of conversation out there, filled with enriching thoughts, away from your computer screen! Many people can tell you about Ireland -- and other places too. Just a thought.

I just realized my post could be interpreted as not encouraging you keep on writing up your experiences, which was not my intention at all. I encourage you like everybody else to go writing this up as you like to doing it.

I really do feel that the opportunity to learn from others in face-to-face conversation is always close at hand.