Thursday 12th April

We have spent a couple of days driving around the various Bastide towns of the Dordogne and they are beautiful.  Built in the thirteenth century by the English under Elaeanor of Aquitaine when we still controlled half of France, or in all reality by marriage and conquest by the Normans the royal families of the English kings of the time ruled half of France; for the poor peasants it probably made little difference who their local barons nominally paid allegiance to, they just had to survive and grow enough food to eat.   The towns were built around large squares with big arched porticoes and stone built houses with half timbered upper floors, reminiscent of our own Tudor  houses but much dustier and the timbers a light brown against a creamy yellow plaster rather than our familiar black and white.  The adjoining streets have mostly been preserved and are much sought after, but they are actually very small and pokey with no gardens and tiny windows so I am not sure I would want one.  The house or gite we are staying in is quite old and made of stone too, and the windows have been renewed but it is dark inside, and you have to have the lights on all day.

And in a funny way though when you first see them, the towns are delightful, as you see more and more by the fourth or fifth you are quite blasé about them.  A bit like paintings in an Art gallery, at first they take your breath away, but there comes a point when you are painting-ed out and just have to leave.  Maybe the human brain can only take in so much beauty, or maybe we are just fickle.  But there is no denying that the towns are really beautiful, but one a day would have been quite enough I think.