Our final Dordogne adventure

Friday July 14 (Vive La Révolution!) dawned bright and sunny, perfect for an adventure to wrap up our week in the beautiful Dordogne. We'd been looking at the river from all angles and from various places all week long, now it was time to get down on the river itself! There must be at least 30 different companies that rent canoes and kayaks, each offering start and finish points covering pretty much every town for miles both up and down river from where we were near Groléjac. You either park at your finish point and get bused up river to where you put in, or the opposite by parking where you put in and bus back up from the finish. The toughest part was figuring out which part of the river we wanted to see.

Once we settled on the right section and had chosen the company that covered that part, we headed for a tiny little town called Envaux to meet the bus. It turns out we really wanted Le Port d'Envaux, which is not just the port section of Envaux as we assumed. I guess you can't assume with little French towns. Le Port d'Envaux is actually a separate town on the other side of the river. Somehow neither of them show up in Louise's database either. we had found Envaux on our map and gave Louise the nearest town (Castelnaud) and through all that ended up across the river from where we wanted to be. So we called to say we'd be a few minutes late and hustled along some dodgy roads towards the nearest bridge to the west. By this time my French twisty one lane road driving was in pretty good shape (not that Alex noticed with her eyes closed). We made it with a few minutes to spare.

Don't forget you can click to biggerize the picture.

We left the Duster and they bused us up to a point just upriver from Laroque-Gageac where we put in. Dunc and I went in one canoe, Mommy and Clara were in another while Zita took a kayak. All week long we had seen various canoes heading peacefully down the river in a nice solitary fashion. Well today the river was packed! We had forgotten about the Bastille day holiday of course. Still, it was lots of fun. Mommy and Clara spent a bit of time going sideways and backwards at first, but shortly we all sorted ourselves into a lazy paddle downstream. The river has a decent current in most places so it was a pretty relaxed trip.

Pushing off.

My man in the bow.

Mommy and Clara. I think some initial directional troubles were because
mommy chose to sit in the middle with Clara behind her. Once they stopped
and switched things were a little smoother. 

The solo paddler. She barely had to paddle to keep up with the clunky canoes.

Heading towards Castelnaud in the distance.

Castelnaud. Of course you recognized it from our visit earlier in the week.

Chateau de Beynac overlooking the town (of Beynac!).

We stop to let the girls catch up as our journey nears its end.

When Le Port d'Envaux hove into view we paddled over and hauled our craft onto shore. We allowed ourselves a well earned ice cream (and a bière pression) and headed back towards home to rest up from our ordeal. Dunc and Clara visited with the Henri and the ladies and we all had a swim and checked up on the Tour de France results for the day.

For some reason Louise took us right up
and through the centre of Domme on our
way home today. Skinny streets!

That evening we had an early dinner at a little restaurant in Groléjac called Le Rond Point. For such a casual little roadside spot it had great food. At this point Clara was becoming something of a pizza margherita with no ________ (fill in the blank with whatever isn't sauce and cheese). They must have had a wood burning oven and we all agreed it was likely the best pizza we'd had yet. Not sure if I've mentioned this yet, but none of us could quite believe how much pizza the French apparently consume. Every other restaurant dealt in pizzas.

The last supper in Dordogne.

Later that evening we packed up in preparation for moving on towards La Suisse and the final week of our adventure.