We were lucky to have a friend from Japan, Maki, join us for 3 days so it was good to have her here and get out of the house.  And everytime I've been to Japan, Maki has always been our tour guide so it was good to replace the favour.  With Maki, we visited a few areas that I've already been to previously but they are still good to see again, plus it gave us a chance to test the new car out on some sightseeing drives.  The first place we went to was Cirque de Navacelles, a beautiful 'oxbow' shaped landscape at the bottom of a large chasm.  Not far away is Saint-Guilhem-Le-Desert (Audrey's favourite), a nice old Village situated in a valley with steep walls; a one way in, one way out scenario.  And finished the day off by strolling to the Pont Diable (Devil's Bridge), a 11th Century Bridge built by Pilgrams and amazing its never been destoyed, which is incredible in itself as its right at the end of deep valley that does flood every year.  The next day was a jaunt off to Avignon, the seat of the Catholic Church until the 1400's and then back to the Pont du Gard.  Personally my third trip there and it's still amazing.  A rainy last day meant that we didn't do anything.
After Maki left it was back to family stuff and preparing for a week away to the Dordogne region.  The Dordogne River Basin, with the Lot and Cere River Basins, contain in excess of 1,500 Chateau's/Castle's.  What's the difference beetween a Chateau and a Castle?  One's French and the others English and the reason there are both in the region is that for a long time during the 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries, basically the Chateau/Castle building Golden Age, the French owned everything on the Right Bank and the English everything on the Left.  What they left behind is an array of magnificent vista's at every bend in the Rivers.  The area also has its far share of caves and therefore cave drawing, the most famous being the one found at Lascaux (pronounced 'las-co'), probably the most famous cave in the world.  As I said before in a previous blog, the site at Lascaux has been badly damaged by Human interaction and has since been closed, but in a world first, a dulplicate was constructed that allows people to get a real feel for what the originals are like.  Even the duplicates look amazing.  The whole week was about getting out and seeing what the Dordogne Region has to offer.  We when to the Padriac Cave, a cave system that has a running river in it, 100m below the surface, we went to Rocamadour, an Village with a Church built above it into the cliff face and then a Castle built on top of that, we went to Beynac where we hopped onto a gabarre for a leisurely cruise on the Dordogne to view the Castle's/Chateau's from the water, we went to Martel to ride on an old train along a disused railway track, we canoed along the Dordogne for 18km's, starting in Meyronne and finishing in Soulliac and then went to probably the prettiest Village in France, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.  The whole week was fun and I enjoyed the time in a new area that I'd read about but never seen.
But the European Tour is about to start and I can't wait to get going and seeing some incredible scenery that I'm sure awaits us throughout Europe.