Canoe Dordogne

29 March

When we left the Arcachon hotel, I had to pay for the room at the end of the stay. Being used to the NZ and US system, I usually just leave the keys in the room or reception and leave, knowing that they will charge it to my card anyway. Suspecting the french system might be different, I reviewed our Visa statement online, and there was no payment for our Bordeaux hotel. So we did a runner on the french l'hotel system. It was on to the Ibis website to send an email to apologise for doing a runner and if they could bill it to my booking credit card.

Marcus forgot to mention the caterpillar walking bus we saw when the left the Neanderthal cave drawings. So voila.

After breakfast, we decided we would go canoeing on the very clear and slow flowing Dordogne river. The river flows past some historic townships, castles and chateaus.

The weather was a beautiful sunny and windless 26C. After the usual wrong turns and hairy narrow lanes, and misprogramming of the GPS, I asked Marcus if he was stressed being the navigator. He said it was stressful because the road and traffic system here is confusing. I can understand what he meant. Traffic lights are really obscure, they are well hidden just like speed cameras in NZ. There is only one set of lights and when you pull up to stop, you can't actually see what the lights are doing unless you open the sun roof. So they have a set of baby traffic lights at the pedestrian level as well. Marcus will take a shot of this in tomorrow's blog.

Some country lanes are so narrow that our wing mirrors were brushing against the hedges or just clearing the rock walls, and these are two ways lanes to boot! So you can find yourself driving along a two lane street which turns out to be a one way street, and a country lane that is two ways where you ears have to be folded back, even if you are the only car on that lane.

I digress, back to the canoeing.

We started at Vitrac township with Canoes Loisirs, and were greeted by Tom who spoke perfect English. I mentioned it and he said he lived in UK for a number of years. Tom recommended the 16km route, which was 16km long surprisingly enough. He said that he will pick us up at the other end, just after Beynac town. We will pass under 5 bridges. He asked how long, 4 or 5 hours, I said no, 3 hours. As it was 12, he agreed to pick us up at 3pm.

Some chateaus we canoed past.

I brought some food and water for us, and some bread for any ducks and geese we may meet on the way. Marcus took the front and I took the rear as captain. For some reason, Marcus complained that he was doing all the work, and when I got involved with the paddling, we veered from one bank of the river to the other without going forward - much like my walks home with Adrian after an afternoon at Concrete.

We put in the most effort at the end of the trip, to drive the canoe up the bank as much as possible so we didn't get our feet wet. All the splashing in the canoe came to nought, everything was dried by the hot sun by the time we finished the trip. Tom was waiting and took us back to the car in his van.

I really like Sarlat, so I asked our hosts if we could stay till Sunday before we head out to Toulouse. Apparently the Saturday fresh market is quite an event, so we will see about that and keep you guys up to date. Marcus needs some fast food after eating healthy or eating less for so many days. So we are going to have super high calorie kebab and frites meal for dinner ce soir.

Bon nuit.