Ahhhhhh, the Dordogne!! Duncan and I had a crush on this region in France when we stayed here for two week during our honeymoon. Now unfortunately we are full on, head over heels in love with the place.

We always knew that we would spend a bit of time in the region so we decided to book a gite (French home let) for the week so that we could also do some serious clothes washing; so that Duncan could finally satisfy his kitchen withdrawals and we could have internet to catch up with family and friends.

We stayed in a little town in northern Dordogne called Corgnac-sur-Isle. Our place was a newly renovated town house with the original huge sandstone brickwork and little quirky features such as very low entrances and the old fireplace now used as the TV cabinet.

But, most importantly it had a kitchen… Duncan loves his markets, and ever since we arrived in France he has been chomping at the bit to buy up big at one of the bustling local village markets and cook up a storm. Entering into the Dordogne we made a beeline to this painfully quaint village and their Sunday market. We bought all our fresh produce for a wonderful Sunday roast in our place. The meat (and more importantly the wine) we would get later…or so we thought.

1^st Rookie Mistake: Trying to buy anything on a Sunday afternoon in rural France.

After checking into our gite we planned to hit the shops to buy our meat which would form the centrepiece to our amazing roast. Nothing was open, absolutely nothing. We ended up having some (wonderful) roast vegies without the roast. Luckily the no wine issue was solved by opening the bottle of Tattinger Champagne we bought from their champagne house (yes, we were going to keep it for a special occasion – but desperate times call for desperate measures!!). It was a hard lesson learned. Tomorrow was Monday and we would buy up big so we could have our first proper meal in the gite…….

2^nd Rookie Mistake: Trying to find anything open on a public holiday in rural France.
The day before was Pentecost Sunday. Similar to the Aussie’s, the French were not going to miss out on the Pentecost public holiday, so had the holiday on Monday…this Monday. If we thought that things were closed yesterday, they were even more closed today.

3^rd Rookie Mistake:
Always have a supply of back up wine.
We were in dire straits – no food and even more catastrophic, absolutely no alcohol.

We decided to visit one of the large Châteaux in the region (Château Hautefort) for two main reasons:

1. It is an awesome Château with some great gardens
2. So that we could raid the gift shop; because it was the only shop open in the whole of France.

In the end we managed to get some overpriced Bergerac wine and some overpriced confit of Duck…in a can. Once more the gourmet kitchen cooked meal would have to wait.

Another issue we were facing was that our gite was leaking water, quite a bit of water from one of the ceiling light fittings. We arranged with the tourist office for someone to have a look.

We arrived back to our gite to find the owner waiting for us, with her husband; she didn’t speak English so she called the couple from upstairs, who brought their son. It was a crazy mix of almost ten people speaking a mixture of French, English and using hell a lot of hand signals. Water leak somewhat sorted we got to know the couple in the upstairs apartment.

Patrick Gomez was a local who was building his house and needed a gite to stay in. We half mentioned that we were having tourist shop food for dinner, and before we knew it Patrick was on the phone to about 10 different restaurants to see if they were open. We saw an advert of an Irish pub and we decided that good old pub grub was absolutely in order. Before we had the chance to find out, Patrick got on his phone, called them up to see if they were open, insisted he drive us there even after we told him we had a GPS, and despite him having 2 mates over for dinner for the evening! This is why Duncan and I love France and especially the country like Dordogne. Forget the French bad reputation for rudeness, meet them half way (like any culture) and they will give you a mile.

One thing that Patrick didn’t tell us was his job; he is a professional rally driver. We soon found out though as he fanged up to 130km/h on the one lane roads. We couldn’t see any cars and if they were coming the other way, the only comfort was that they would hit Patrick first.

Patrick also showed the house that he was building for his family on the way to the pub. We had known him for about an hour, but his French hospitality extended to showing us his pride and joy.

The Irish Pub, Fiddler’s Rest, ended up being our local for our stay in the Dordogne not only for fact they had great food and that they had Kilkenny on tap, but because the proprietors. Ronan and Jo were two wonderful, fun and friendly people who we enjoyed having a yarn with and closing the bar with our chatter.

We spent the next couple of days experiencing all the things we missed out on when we were last in the Dordogne for our honey moon. The Dordogne is famous for caves and cave paintings, so we visited another fabulous cave – but to be honest the caves that we visited in New Zealand have ruined us and we are comparing all other caves to Waitomo Caves. We also did a wonderful day of kayaking up the Dordogne River. Duncan and I had so much fun paddling away looking and the wonderful countryside and riverside chateaux. Just a simply wonderful moment stopping in the glorious sunshine for lunch along the banks and having our lunch. So much so, that we actually lost track of time, and our meeting spot was now miles away, some furious paddling, and we managed to catch up with our driver, seconds before he drove off without us!

One of our most important activities was food shopping. The shops now back open (Alleluia!!) we went into the town of Excideuil to do a huge shop. While shopping we ran into a guy wearing a Wallabies jersey. We did the travellers thing and struck up a conversation. Great to hear a good ol’ Aussie accent. Every second person seemed to be English in the Dordogne – no exaggeration; it is actually quite ridiculous how much English you hear in a country region of France. The Aussie guy recommended that we go up to the market area of the town as there was a new cafe just opened run buy an Aussie… and even more so he was from Canberra– what the!!!???

We ended up spending a good couple of hours chatting and laughing away to our new great mates Kevin (Canberran) and Vicki (English – we didn’t hold it against her 😉 )

We headed back to our local Irish pub to catch up with Ronan and Jo not before making dinner plans with Kevin and Vicki. We stumbled out of Fiddler’s Rest after another great night chinwagging with Ronan and Jo until so late that they locked up the pub and we drank on until the wee hours.

Ahh, Jeez, we were so flushed with happiness (and Kilkenny) as we drove back to our Gite and home. Bombing around amazing countryside catching up with mates, heading back to our little home, this was very intoxicating and was dangerously feeling very much like a second home where we could easily settle.

Catching up with Kevin and Vicki a couple of days later was a blast and wonderful to catch up with our new friends again. A sign of how relaxed we were was discovering that we Duncan had left the camera behind at the restaurant. We discovered this only after we had checked out of our Gite the next morning (we were so sad about leaving we were almost sobbing). Unfortunately we fell victim once again to the obscure French opening times, which by now I am sure you need a Slide Rule and a degree in calculus to possibly get close to understanding.

4^th Rookie Mistake: Trying to go to anything on a Sunday in rural France.

The restaurant was closed and didn’t open until tomorrow. (see 1^st Rookie Mistake)

We almost felt like locals again (like we needed any more hints) when we could phone around to our friends to ask if they knew the owner. Vicki did the phone-around which led us to a funny interaction with the pub owner’s 7 year old son at their front door. The little boy answered only to be greeted by Duncan, sketchy beard, probably half washed, dark sunnies, he leaned down to the little boy “Parlez-vous Anglais ?” The little boy basically crapped his dacks at this rough looking Australian and closed the door. Further enquiries (by Vicki having to phone the house for us – the door was certainly not opening for us again) found that the owner and the little boy’s parents were not at home.

So there we were with two big problems, no camera and no accommodation.

No Camera. We would have to wait until tomorrow to get it. No big problems we were the last to leave the pub, so it can’t have gone too far

No Accommodation. Rally Driver Patrick had it under control, because being a little celebrity in town he knew everyone, and a couple of phone calls later we had our little gite back – and free of charge (thanks to the sympathy case Patrick put forward on our behalf).

Not to let a little thing like losing all your memories to put us down we went back to our Local, Fiddler’s Rest, for another session and to drown our sorrows. Another late night stint closing up the pub.

After a couple of Killkenny’s and some more glasses of wine on the house (thanks Jo and Ronan!!:) ), we started over analysing and came to the conclusion that the universe was trying to tell us something, that we were meant to stay and come back to the Dordogne. After the brief and worry free (honestly) wait, we arrived back to the pub at 9am to be handed the camera along with a large sigh of relief. We then said our goodbyes to Vicki and Kevin, and hit the road. A day late, but not a day wasted.

We felt on our honeymoon that it was a home away from home. Back here again and we had further built upon the memories and made a range of lasting friends in the short week that we had been there (Vicki and Kevin we will see you Canberra shortly!).

Dordogne we will be back!! Until then, Spain will have to do