Let's Travel Europe: Three bastides

Friday 18th May

We had a busy night and morning re-planning our next week. We decided that we no longer wanted to head as far south as the Pyrenees but would rather stay in the Dordogne area and explore a bit more. It was a bit of mucking around to cancel existing bookings and book substitutes but we finally got it sorted. We've been looking in a few real estate agent windows and there are some beautiful renovators delights out there - but no, not seriously.

There are quite a few bastide (medieval) villages within about 20k of Bergerac where we are currently staying, so we set ourselves a loop with 3 on the list and headed off. The bastide villages were built in the 13th and 14th century and as well as offering security for the residents, they promoted trade. We've done a bit of reading and it seems they followed a similar design, around a town square, and with houses of the same size.

The temple in our first village - Eymet.
In this village we heard a lot of English people speaking.
It appeared that one of the restaurants was owned by an Englishman.
Maybe this is one of the places where they 'escape to the continent'.

When we left Eymet it was getting close to lunchtime so we were on the hunt for a relais. We'd nearly given up when there it was - at the road junction. A dozen big trucks and assorted cars couldn't be wrong. Very nice, simple lunch.

The second village - Issigeac.
This was our favourite, built around a couple of circular central streets
around the town square. It had a lovely old feel to it.
Lots of greenery on walls and in planter boxes made it very pretty.
Very quiet and peaceful to wander up and down the alleys.
Beautiful! Reminded us of Eguishem over in the northeast of France.