Tuesday 21st August

There is a market on most days of the week somewhere locally, and Sunday is no exception.  Sunday market is in Issigeac, a small town not so far away, maybe 30 kilometres.  But this market is huge, it takes over not only the town square but several streets and spills over in all directions.  And it is full of tourists, mostly English of course, but what did you expect.  There are a couple of fields given over to car parking, and even here there are stalls and more stalls.  And all pandering to the tourists, there are all manner of clothes, tee shirts, dresses and shorts.  There are items from North Africa, leather slippers and lampshades and hubbub pipes.  There all manner of soaps and candles and jewelry that frankly you can find all over the world.  There are the regional produce stalls, cheese and tinned fois gras, and charcuterie galore as well as the usual array of fruit and veg.  There are gammons roasting in a big log tray, there is wine galore too.  There are donkey rides and people dressed in ‘medeaval’ costumes.  But it is all a bit too plastic for me, too much put on for the tourists.  We came to France to get away from the idea of being tourists, so in future we will give Issigeac, the middle-class Blackpool of the Dordogne a miss, thank you very much.