September 13th & 14th, 2006

We reached Brantôme at 10 am which was a bit early to call it a day. We found a hotel room and went off to explore a pretty little village about 10 km away called Bourdeilles.  Brantôme is small town situated on a peninsula formed by the curve of the river Dronne.  Many tourists came during the day but most of them would leave after lunch so the place is fairly quiet again.

We ran into the couple from Seattle again in Brantôme.  David and Jane have gone further north since we last saw them in Sarlat a few days ago and are almost at the end of their vacation.  We exchanged email addresses and will connect up in the virtual world.

Since our hotel restaurant is described by the guide books as being one of the best and many of the other restaurants in town are already closed for holidays, we ended up splurging for a fine 3-course meal last night.  Very memorable food indeed!

A day ride took us to St. Jean-de-Côle, another pretty village. The route was fairly quiet with a few logging and transport trucks.  St. Jean-de-Côle is very quiet unlike Brantôme with very few tourists.  There is an old church and priory and a market hall which is made of timbers with a tile roof.  These are traditionally made without any nails and are held together with wooden pegs. There seems to be some small scale local manufacturing but the main industry in this area appears to be logging and milling.

The rain started as we left St. Jean-de-Côle so we returned to Brantôme by the back roads to hide out until dinner time.  Tomorrow we return to Sarlat via Préigueux but not all the way by bike.  We will be taking a train from Périgueux south to Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac.  This would cut 40 km of the nasty stretch of road south of Périgueux.