Here for a rest

Have two good friends arriving today for a short break during their motorcycle tour of Western Europe, the break from riding will probably be very welcomed.  Break did I say?  Well, there are a few things that they would like to do in the next few days ...

Tonight we are off out to a typical and good but inexpensive French restaurant for dinner.  Tomorrow morning visit our local market and have a coffee or two after a look round, afternoon probably go to a huge and very impressive 13th century chateau then in the evening there is the hugely spectacular son et lumiére of the Battle of Castillon.  That was the last battle of the Hundred Years War which finally saw the English kicked out of Aquitaine, there is a cast of over six hundred local people, eighty horses and just so much more<;  The show starts at 2230 hrs (allegedly) but is invariably at least half an hour late (well, this France after all) lasting for two and a half hours - should be back home around three o'clock-ish!

Sunday morning off to a monthly custom and classic car meet in Bergerac, after lunch a leisurely afternoon at our local lake and beach.  Cooking a typical French menu for dinner in the evening of Jambon and Melon, tartiflette and haricots vert, cheese and green salad followed by tarte tatin and coffee - all washed down with a drop of wine or two!

Monday - visit Laparade which is an old bastide perched on a two hundred metre high cliff overlooking the Lot valley with spectacular panoramic views, on a good day the Pyrenées can be seen in the far distance.  Thence onto le Temple-sur-Lot which is a superbly restored Crusader castle (now a restaurant), return home via Casseneuil which is a wonderfully unspoilt medieaeval village hardly disturbed by the twenty first century.

Return home for lunch, lazy afternoon the to the weekly summer night market in Villeréal.  Villeréal is an old bastide town built by the French circa 1420 to keep the English forces at bay during the Hundred Years War, not very successfully as it changed hands at least four times.  The centre of the town is a covered market hall of the same period open on the sides where locl growers and producers offer their wares for consumption under the halle where tables and chairs are set out.  It is possible to have an excellent meal there as all manner of products are on sale, lamb cutlets and kebabs, escargots, moules mariniére, jambon (local dried ham a la Parma), foie gras, duck, pizzas, various cheeses, variety of sausages, bread, salad stuffs, assorted patisseries and of course an excellent selection of wine.  There is a strict rule that all of the stallholders must be local and nod their produce too from within a radius of twenty kilometres so the produce is all very local indeed.

Come Tuesday morning the lads will probably be grateful to be back on the road for a rest ...