Wednesday 12th December 2007

A beautifully sunny, dry, still and very frosty morning with the external thermometer showing -1.7°C, our first minus of the Odyssey.
We are quite close to the famous Lascaux Caves, described as “the Sistine Chapel of prehistory” due to its beautiful prehistoric cave paintings. However, when I looked at the map, I discovered that there is a huge collection of caves centering on the Vezere Valley. We also found out from the campsite reception that there is a National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac in the Vezere Valley and it is open today. We can not find out anything about the other caves, including Lascaux, so we decide to head for the museum and ask about the other sites.
It was an interesting journey to Eyzies, passing pretty villages and chateaux. The museum was not easy to find and by the time that we arrived is was too close to the lunchtime closing (50 minutes before) and we were not allowed to enter. This gave us the excuse to have an long lunch in a local restaurant – a three course meal including Duck Cassoulet for €13.
We had parked in a car park that had a motorhome section with overnight parking and services. If we had known about this (it is not listed in Camperstop Europe), we would have stayed there but we had committed to another night at La Prairie. However we were able to park free of charge and we also used the services to dump the grey water as this is not easy at La Prairie.
The museum was very good and very comprehensive – I have never seen so many stone tools and weapons all organised by age. It showed how the tools changed over the years and there were excellent videos demonstrating how the tools could be made. There were also good displays of pictorial stone carvings from many locations in the area.
We found out more about the caves in the area and what was open. Lascaux is open but, at this time of the year, most of the other caves can only be visited by booking in advance. This has to done at the other major cave, Font-de-Gaume less than two kilometers from the museum. We set off for Font-de-Gaume but were warned that we might have missed the last guided tour of the day. This turned out to be the case but we decided to change our plans and book for the next day. This meant that we could go the Lascaux in the morning, Font-de-Gaume in the afternoon and stay in the Eyzies camperstop overnight.
We then set off for La Prairie travelling up the Vezere Valley and getting hopelessly misdirected by the satnav, once down a road reserved for forestry vehicles and once down a track full of potholes and totally unsuitable. We then ignored all of its directions and found a much better route back.
We paid our bill so that we could get an early start tomorrow and were assured by the staff that tomorrow would be cold but fine, just like today - excellent!
Photos: Lac du Causse – the French do it in style, this is the outlet from the reservoir; Eyzies – one of the museum buildings is under the cliff on the right, all of this area was covered in mediaeval buildings; We met this giant deer in the Eyzies museum.