25.07.2013: Dune du Pilat and Arcachon

We drove first to the airport at Bordeaux because our friends had to leave today. Then we drove out to the coast to have a look at the grand dunes at Pyla (Dune du Pilat) and to Arcachon.

The dunes at Pilat are the tallest dunes in Europe. They are about 500 meters wide, 2.7 kilometers in length and have a height at 110 meters above sea level. Very impressing !

For those who want to read more about the sand dunes, here’s a link to a good article in Daily Mail:  The sand dunes at Pyla

 

And this will be our last day in France for now, returning home tomorrow. We’ve had a very nice time here !

Pictures from the dunes at Pilat

 

 

Pictures from Arcachon

 

… and you can even do whale-watching here (bluewhales )

24.07.2013: Visiting Damazan, Montgaillard and Buze-sur-Baise

Damazan is a small town just a few kilometers from Aiguillon, and we had a stop in the town on our way to see the wine-producing district of Buzet. In Buzet we could see vineyards and the Vignerons de Buzet Cooperation  where we tasted and bought wine, and got an interesting tour on the production facility.

Afterwards we had a stop at the picturesque village of Mongaillard

 

Pictures from Damazan

 

Pictures from Buzet:

 

Pictures from the wine-production facility

 

Pictures from Montgaillard (Val d’Albret)

 

23.07.2013: Visiting Toulouse , la Ville Rose–the pink City

We got up at 6.45 in the morning, had a quick breakfast and walked down to the railway station to take the train to Toulouse. Luckily we got help buying tickets for the train, the ticket machines are not easy to operate for a stranger, and there’s no or limited support for English.

The journey took 1h and 40 minutes each way, so at 9.40 we were in Toulouse and spent the rest of the day there.

Toulouse is a big city with a population of about 450.000 and has lots of space-related industry and has also a large manufacturing plant for the Airbus.

Pictures:

 

 

The railway station in Toulouse (the Canal du Midi in front)

 

A house in Toulouse

 

 

The front of the Capitolum in Toulouse

 

Toulouse, the pink city

 

Statue in front of the Capitolum in Toulouse

 

Children playing by the water fountains at the Capitolum

 

Approaching the Saint Sernin basilica

The Saint Sernin basilica

 

Inside the basilica

 

We crossed the St Pierre bridge across the Garonne

 

On the other side of the Garonne we found a park along the river, the Le Grand Parc Garonne, which was kind of a mixture between a park and a playing ground. Nice !

 

Crossing back over the Garonne over the Pont Neuf bridge

While crossing the Pont Neuf bridge, I discovered this black swan, which I’ve never seen before. This species originates in parts of Australia (and New Zealand), but is introduced by humans in some parts of Europe

 

View over the Garonne from the Pont Neuf bridge

 

It’s nice  with a street map on the wall of a house

 

From the Grand Rond park

 

The Canal du Midi which runs east of the Garonne and makes it possibe for smaller vessels to navigate the Garonne

22.07.2013: Visiting a prune farmer and the small town Fumel and Château de Bonaguil

On our way to Fumel and the castle Bonaguil, we stopped at a local farmer who produces prunes. They also had a museum that showed how their family had produces prunes through the years, and they had a shop where you could buy lots of products related to prunes. Interesting !

We continued to the city of Fumel, and then to the Bonaguil castle some 8 kilometers outside the town. The castle has a history back to the 13th century, but was completely restructured in the years before and after 1500.

Today the castle is being owned  by the city of Fumel (since 1860), and is also being used for arts exhibitions and for theatre festivals.

 

Local prune farmer near Aiguillon:

 

 

 

Fumel is a small town some 55 km from Aiguillon, with about 5100 inhabitants

Here’s the cathedral (Iglesias de Saint Anthonyus)

Pictures from Fumel:

 

Pictures from Bonaguil castle:

 

Views from the tower:

 

The castle is also used for arts’ exhibitions, this summer it was art by the artist Nathalie Decoster

 

Local artists displaying their art for sale on the way up to the castle:

21.07.2013: Visiting the Lascaux-cave

I’ve read about the Lascaux-caves for as long as I can remember, and I was ecstatic when I discovered that our holiday trip would bring us not too far away from the famous caves. The Lascaux-cave are located near the town of Montignac in Dordogne, by the river Vezere, about 150 km away from Aiguillon.

The cave was discovered by accident in 1940 by local farmers, and the world was astonished to learn that these cave paintings were done by the Cro Magnon people, the direct ancestors to our species in Europe. The paintings are over 17.000 years old. They consist mainly of pictures of large animals, and are done with great craftmanship.

The original Lascaux-caves were closed for the public by the French government in 1963 because the paintings started to get damaged by all the visitors, and an exact replica of the cave and the paintings were created 200 meters away. This process took 11 years, and this is what visitors see today. An amazing experience !

 

We stopped for a cup of coffee at Belves, a very nice town

 

We had s stop at a local artist in Belves

 

 

Approaching Montignac the landscape  was quite spectacular,  limestone being carved by water over thousand and thousands of years

 

The Lascaux II cave:

 

On our way down to the entrance of the caves

Waiting outside the entrance for the next tour to start. Each guided tour takes about 40 minutes, and it was nice to escape the heat for a short time

 

It was not allowed to take photos or video in the caves, so I don’t have any of my own to show. Here’s a few I found on the net, just to give an slight impression of what this is about.

(Author HTO, published on Wikipedia)

 

Author: Prof saxx, published on Wikipedia

 

Author: Cro-Magnon peoples, published on Wikipedia

20.07.2013: Revisiting Nerac

We decided to show our friends the town of Nerac, which we found very charming. We had hoped to take the small tourist train that runs from Nerac, but this was not in operation , hadn’t been the whole year in fact. So we took a river ‘cruise’ instead, a one hour trip up the river Baise, past the locks of Nazareth and back again.

The colour of the water in the river Baise had changed dramatically since the few days we last visited the town. The river was all yellow now, due to a flood somewhere upstream.

 

On our way to Nerac we passed this canal, the Canal Lateral a la Garonne, which is an artificial canal running to the south of Garonne for many kilometers, used for irrigation and transport.

 

The river boat we cruised with in the background here

 

The river had turned yellow since our last visit !

 

 

We got acquainted with this little fellow while waiting for the river cruise to start

 

River cruise:

 

Approaching the locks of Nazareth

 

Inside the locks, and the water is lifting us up to the same level as the water above the locks. The lock is quite narrow, only 4.20 meter, making a tight fit for the river boat which is 4.10 meters wide.

 

We can leave the locks and continue up the river

19.07.2013: Le Temple-sur-Lot and the Latour-Marliac garden

We had breakfast in the garden as usual, but today together with our friends from Norway and then we had a trip to the market (20 meters away ), which is arranged twice a week here in Aiguillon (Tuesdays and Fridays) to buy ingredients for tonight’s dinner (mussels, shrimps and crayfish. Definitely something to look forward to!

We then decided to visit the small town of Le Temple-sur-Lot, located just some 15 km to the east of Aiguillon. We spent most of the time here in the beautiful garden of Latour-Marliac.

The Latour-Marliac garden was founded back in 1875 when Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac wanted to make an effort regarding the propagation, cultivation and commercialization of hardy water lilies.

The Latour-Marliac  is definitely worth a visit: lots of water plants to see (water lilies, lotus flowers etc), a small museum, a lovely garden and also a café to sit down and relax after all the walking.

It’s also nice to know that the water lilies that inspired the painter Claude Monet came from this very garden.

 

 

Some pictures from Le Temple-sur-Lot:

 

Pictures from the Latour-Marliac garden:

  

18.07.2013: La Rochelle

We visited the very nice coastal city of La Rochelle to the north of Bordeaux. It was over 250 km to drive (each direction), but we felt like going to the coast after having been inland for so many days. And on the return trip we fetched our friends from Norway who arrived at Bordeaux airport in the evening.

 

Pictures from La Rochelle:

 

 

 

    

17.07.2013: Visiting Moirax, Layrac, Laplume and Vianne

Another day of exploration of the area surrounding Aiguillon.

We drove first to Moirax and had a look at the old priory here. The priory has a history that goes back to 1049, and the construction of the Notre-Dame church was started a few years later, in 1060.

We drove then to Layrac, a small town with a population of about 3500. The church here (Eglise Saint Martin) has a history back to the 12th century. We wanted to have something to drink and eat here, but finding a place that serves food at midday is nigh to impossible. The café we ended up with served only drinks, not even ice cream. But we had a nice cup of coffee in the shade.

We continued to Laplume, a small town with about 1400 inhabitants. In 1977 a giant fire destroyed the district of the ramparts, but much of it has now been rebuilt and as far as we can see, very cleverly done. There’s also a nice view from the city over the surrounding areas.

We continued home via the small town of Vianne, where had coffee and ice cream

 

Pictures from Moirax:

I presume this is where the priests sit ?

 

 

Vines in Moirax. The rose trees which are planted at the end of many of the rows, are the botany version of ‘canary in a gold mine’, and can help farmers to spot diseases more quickly.

 

Pictures from Layrac:

 

Pictures from Laplume:

 

Pictures from Vianne:

 

And a few more pictures from Aiguillon, as we walked in the medieval part of the city searching (and found) the restaurant Les Ecuries

16.07.2013: Visiting Duras, Miramont de Guyenne, Lauzun and Tourtres

We drove first to Duras, some 45 km from Aiguillon, where we knew there was an old castle, the Castle of Duras (Château de Duras). The town is quite small with only 1300 inhabitants, and is traversed by the river Dropt, which is also one of the tributaries to the river Garonne.

The castle has a history that goes back as far as 1137 by a nephew of Pope Clement V (the pope even seems to have been helping financing it !).  It was built more like a fortress than a residence, but people have lived in it as well, which you’ll see when you visit it.

We drove back via Miramont de Guyenne and Lauzun, and happened to pass the vantage point at Tourtres, where we had a stop to admire the view.

 

You’ll find many fields like this here in Lot-et-Garonne. These sunflowers were almost 2 meters in height

 

Quite impressive equipment for watering the fields. This contraption was at least 100 meters long. It seems that water cannons are more common than these enormous structures though

 

Pictures from Duras:

 

 

Pictures from Miramont de Guyenne, where we had a quiet lunch on the bench outside the church

When the church was restored, it was fitted with new stained glass paintings and a new blue colour was developed, which is now called Miramont-blue

 

Pictures from Lauzun

 

Pictures from the vantage point at Tourtres: