Our overnight stop at Brantôme was quite pleasant with broken cloud/sunny intervals and a riverside pitch complete with a friendly moorhen, which I’ve never before witnessed. It’s diet was fascinating, too. As well as tromping across teh grass to retrieve morsels of bread thrown by yours truly, it would suddenly tear off and strike down a flying beetle with deadly speed and accuracy. We also saw it lugging a worm out of the ground. Moorhens have quite a varied diet, it seems.
We wandered back into Brantôme before leaving to get bread and a French treat for breakfast. I had been too busy looking at the Disney-esque buildings yesterday to notice this intriguing machine in the car park. Most machines in car parks tend to dispense tickets. Not in Brantôme; in Brantôme’s car park you can buy condoms. Presumably this is just in case you happen to bump into someone completely irresistible whilst parking your car.
We left and headed for the upper reaches Dordogne. The sunny intervals were replaced by rather more solid grey skies as we neared our destination. Our first attempt at finding a site was less than successful – it was little more than a car park under trees with electric hook-ups. It was also on a small bluff facing directly into quite a strong wind. We elected to try a site in Rocamadour that we found many years ago, just 20kms/13miles further on. We turned off the road into the entrance to be greeted by a sign that said it no longer took motor-caravans or caravans. After some deft reversing and turning, we found an alternative, still in Rocamadour.
Half the French world has found the same site in Rocamadour. Owing to this year’s ridiculously late Easter, tomorrow, Thursday, is Ascension and is a public holiday. France is having a long weekend complete with Satan’s Little Disciples being on the loose. The relatively full site makes it feel like August – other than the grey skies.
Two things have collapsed: the weather and any hope of tranquility. We’ll just have to grin and bear it for the weekend, though we could try to find somewhere less touristy which may be a little calmer.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
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