Day 40: Thiviers to Perigueux

October 5, 2023

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We left our little studio by the N21. It had turned out, despite appearances, to be quite fine. And although the supplied breakfast turned out to be just some apple sauce, white bread, and butter and jam, left for us in the fridge, after over a month of nothing but quality baguettes and croissants, the white bread in the toaster was quite a novelty.

We hopped on the N21 for about a block, and headed on back to the town's main square. There we found the two formerly closed bakeries in full operation. It is unusual to see two so close together and both open at the same time. Now that we are experts on the town, having been residents for about eighteen hours, we can locate four bakeries, excluding in that count the U-Tile.

Dodie chose the bakery on the right, for its sandwich selection, while I think the public preferred the one on the left for its baguettes. (Today I don't need baguette, I have white bread toast!). Dodie chose ham and emmenthal for the sandwich, but fois gras was an option. That's because we are in the middle of fois gras land. See the sign on the corner of the building beside me:

Something that came from the bakery today was a red praline bun. Good ones, like this was, are so yummy. We had thought we only found them somewhere out east along the Loire, but here it was. The specimen in the photo was 2/3 eaten before I thought of recording it.

Looking to repeat yesterday's lovely ride, even at the cost of a much longer total outing, we continued and crossed the N21, launching then into the wild blue yonder. In fact, it was the green yonder, as we jumped onto the voie verte that would follow the river l'Isle all the way to Perigueux.

Up into the town, then off into the never never.

The scene as we set off on the voie verte was just gorgeous, and this kept coming in one form and another for the entire day.

Something we became aware of very quickly was that we were in an area of walnut orchards. Walnut is not a tree we see at home, where we only know of one nut orchard, and those are hazelnuts. We did run into a lot of pecans in New Mexico, but we are not nut people. That's why we found these walnuts so exciting. Also, the trees generously reach down and offer samples. With the first one, the husk was intact and we had to peel that away to reveal the familiar nut. We cracked it open with a wrench, and found the fresh nut rather astringent. Later we chose ones that were dry enough that the husk was almost off, but we have not wrenched those as yet.

Skipping way ahead in the story of the day, we later ran into walnut gelato in the town. It was labelled Noix du Perigord. We mentioned to the ice cream lady that at home this is called Noix du Grenoble, and she told us that they have Noix du Grenoble here as well, but that Noix du Perigord has a milder flavour. However she did allow that fresh noix is not so mild, however if we would be here for the coming Saturday market, we could buy scads of them.

We continued to pass more and more walnuts. I noticed with the ones below, dense green foliage below and more bare branches above. But this was our first day even seeing walnut, let alone understanding how they should look.

The final area where we would have a lot to learn about walnuts is the processing. Below we see them going into something that made a lot of whirring. We were unfortunately too shy to go find out how it is all done.

Where we were not shy was when we encountered this large truck parked blocking a narrow bridge. Some cars turned around and went another way, but we barged past.

One of the clues that this is a foie gras area is the sign for the experimental goose farm, in Coulaures. This sign, anyway, is famous - we have seen it also in the Hutchings blog from this Spring.

Probably the most striking aspect of today's route was the continued dominance of buildings made from stone. These seem so natural in the landscape, with their rough grey and cream tones.

In Coulaures the lovely stone carried forward to a small chapel, and also to a no doubt extremely old bridge.

The chapel, Notre Dame du Pont, is a 15th century pilgrimage site.

A stone wall enhances the appearance of the river.

There was no indication about the age of the bridge.

The narrow road narrows more in the town, where the buildings were not placed with cars in mind.

We passed more of the sunflowers that had given such great images yesterday. Here, where they are not so many, it can be clearly seen that they are planted among brassicas. We have no idea what the growing strategy is.

Sunflower and brassica, late in the season, ?

We had come to trust the route verte signs, and so stuck with them as we were directed onto dirt road beside the river. But we were less than thrilled when we found the road blocked by a road repair crew. Eventually we chased them out of the way and were able to carry on.

Just by Savignac les Eglises we noticed some tall cliffs opposite the road. These were perhaps just cliffs, but they much resemble cliffs in this area that contain caves, with prehistoric painting. We are also not far from the famous Lascaux cave paintings.

Eventually our road returned to this, so easy to ride.

We climbed a fair bit, with the result that the oak and chestnut turned to pine plantations. But this was not for long.

We have yet to see sunflowers being harvested, but here we have what looks like a standard combine going through the corn. Unlike the harvest we had seen before, with the whole plants being chopped and deposited in trucks, this machine seems to be grabbing the corn kernels and ejecting the chaff behind.

As the GPS had foretold, there was a bikeway along the river all the way into Perigueux, for the last 5 km or more. It was a really great way to be entering the city, capping a perfect ride.

The cycleway for the final bit by the river.

OK, France could not resist one last route barree. But it was ok, the detour signs led us right to the hotel.

Below is not our hotel! but it is just beside the hotel. And just behind the hotel is the St. Front cathedral. The structure on the pedestal is in fact a guard house, left over from the medieval period, and with a controlling view of the river. The situation in this area, which was called Rues Neuves, at the feet of the cathedral and bordered by the river is that it was subject to flooding. The buildings became degraded and were finally demolished in the 1960's. The Ibis hotel building looks like it was built on top of buildings that were built on top of Rues Neuves. It does give us a great view of the cathedral from our room.

The guard house. It seems to be called L'Eschif de Creyssac

We dropped our stuff and bikes at the hotel, and walked up to look at the cathedral and to figure out what the rest of the town might be about. The tourist map listed 18 things to see in just the cathedral district. At first we were walking with this in hand, but we realized we had no hope of following a circuit to all the spots - not this late in the afternoon. So we visited the cathedral and then did some aimless but limited walking in the medieval section. You can see this in the map at the end of this page. And if you zoom out on the map. you see that there is a lot more to Perigueux than what we walked. One area we missed is called the Gallo Roman city, which would be worth checking out. Beyond that, it is really only the medieval parts that interest us, and we feel we got a reasonable flavour of that.

Walking to the cathedral, we are immediately immersed in narrow streets and crumbly buildings.

In front of the cathedral the street is quite broad, and there are too many cars, though this careful shot does not show them.

The cathedral is beautiful and dramatic, but for me anyway, surprisingly un photogenic. I have tried to get some gorgeous shots, but somehow they are illusive. Here is the outside:

The cathedral could generally be called a 12th -13th century building, though there are 11th century bits, and it even had a major renovation in the second part of the 19th century. The architect at that time went on to design Sacre Coeur in Paris. Unlike the gothic cathedrals we have been visiting, this one is a Byzantine style, with lots of domes and rounded arches. The layout, like a Greek cross, is like St Mark's in Venice.

Domes and arches, but not a dramatic photo

Most glass was of the sort of standard painted scene variety, but there were also these attractive blue panes

The 17th century giant altarpiece came from the Jesuit College in Perigueux. It was so dark in that section that my camera could barely make it out.

There are five chandeliers, one under each dome. The largest was originally in the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

Now back outside we had our stroll around the medieval town. The layout felt like narrow streets and lanes connecting pleasant squares, all mostly car free. It was really terrific. Here below is a bit of a commented tour around.

We stopped into a small Carrefour and picked up some salads for supper. Looking at (at part of) their cheese shelves, we see the names of towns we could visit.

Dodie noticed these elaborate balconies. The essence of older buildings is decoration of windows, with sills, carving, balconies, etc.

This domed building is beyond where we walked, so we did not discover what it is.

This half timbered building was captured in the photos which you can see in my photo!

Closeup of the door grill work. This is from the 18th century.

Narrow streets lead to squares like this.

The building on the corner, with the truffle shop. It is called the Tenant House.

We went down for another look at l'Isle, which we had followed to here from Thiviers. This bridge is the Pont des Barris.

The hotel gives a good view of the cathedral, and the desk clerk was careful to give us a room looking the right way. But from our window we rather preferred seeing this pussy cat.

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Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 2,113 km (1,312 miles)

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