Two lovely days on the road

Saturday 6th May

We've had 2 days of travelling, heading closer to Spain. We had no plans to see or do anything in particular on the way but each day presented places to see.

Yesterday it was Monpazier, a small bastide village. A bastide is a walled village - these walls apparently built by the English, part of the 100 years war. We easily found parking right on the outskirts of the village and it was an easy stroll along the main street. This village is an artisans village with many different crafts on show - beading, pottery, ceramics, woodwork, fabric painting for home decor, and other arts and crafts.

A few photos of Monpazier.

We love these beautiful narrow walkways -
you can find some interesting sights if you detour down some of these.

The beams in the roof of these arcades were amazing.

The village square with the covered market posts in the right hand corner.

Not meant to be a photo of me but rather the painted decor fabrics.

We stopped here for a coffee and snack and met an American lady there, who lives in Germany but has a house nearby. We had an interesting chat with her about how quiet the village is at the moment and how it is losing all its services - the last doctor retired just recently and they can't get another. Sound familiar? Seems that this doctor shortage is happening world wide. We also talked with her about documenting family history and she suggested that maybe we should write our own story - it is too late once the older generation has gone to get some of the family information.

Onwards through a few other bastide villages - really just driving through, not stopping for a good look around. 

Our overnight stop was at a town called Marmande where we found a Chinese buffet/wok restaurant really close to the hotel. We have found these on all our trips to France and love them for the fresh food, the choice and also that you can select your raw ingredients and have the chefs cook them up with your choice of sauce.

Today we were on the road again headed to a little village called Saint-Cricq Challos - not on any map I can find but at least our gps knew where it was. We couldn't get in to our accommodation till after 4 so we plugged in the name of another beautiful village - Lectoure. Parking - a loop through the main street and around the remparts before we worked out to park along the main street. 

In this village we just checked out the cathedral which dated back to 13th century, wandered along the remparts and down the main drag. This village had mineral spring spas which seemed to have plenty of people there. There were a lot of randonneurs up and down the street, all with backpacks and hiking poles. We're not sure if this village is on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrims walk (maybe too far north) but a lot of the backpacks carried a scallop shell which Rob says is the pilgrims walk sign.

This tower on the cathedral in Lectoure looked more impressive in real life.

Cheap wines - so far all the house reds have been great I'm told.

Rob likes to check out the church organs.

Walls and remparts in Lectoure.

It's spring here and some of the iris displays we have seen have been beautiful. 
So many colours.

Two dogs keeping an eye on the tourists.

Travelling on - we are passing through Nogaro and there is a motor racing circuit there. Detour! There was a race meeting happening. We think a come and try day. All sorts of cars and in all sorts of condition. Campers, scooters, dogs, and brazen Aussies who just act like they know what they are doing and con their way into the circuit for a look.

Now we are in our Chambres d'hote for two nights. We've sort of shot ourselves in the foot here. It's nice to stay in quiet places off the beaten track, but when it comes to meals there is often not much choice. Tonight we travelled to a village only 8k away but on these smaller country roads that can be a bit of a pain.