Enfin, nous arrives a notre maison de boulangerie dans le hameau d'Auriac

Sunday 1 September 
Before heading west we take the car up to the top of a nearby hill to the village of Usson, near the town of Remy-de- Chargnat village to look at an elevated view of the valley. Of course, there is a Medieval church and a giant statue of Madonna  with Child. The view shows a 360 degree vista  for miles and as Flashy explains, is a volcanic plain of columnar jointed basalt. As we enter the church, Flashy notices a statue of Saint Anthony. Now for those heathens who don't have saints, Saint Anthony is the patron Saint of lost causes and fittingly enough, Flashy pays 1.50€ and lights a candle.

We now await the results of the Euro Millions lottery,  We planned to travel on D and N roads south for a while then across the National Park westwards to our farm house on the Dordogne. Many things made this an interesting trip, including but in no particular order, Amelie the GPS trying to take us somewhere completely different, a baguette vending machine, an eclair for guess who, Lady P trying to navigate, drive and argue with Flashy all at the same time and very narrow winding roads with, at times, rocky walled edges. The odd speeding Frenchman and lots of very big RV's  were also interesting life experiences. We made a delightful pit stop on the top of the mountain at about 1200 metres for a cold beer, Aperol Spritz and two bowls of fries – yum! This was a well earned reward for our successful negotiation of another scary French road sign with a large white minus on a red background and the words ‘sauf riverains'. Amelie led us to this junction and as we were somewhat apprehensive about her directions, we reversed, got google to translate the sign (residents only) and proceeded ahead anyway -ignorance is bliss and luckily after descending into a deep gorge across a narrow bridge we came up the other side and rejoined the road we were originally on. Thanks Amelie, that probably took an extra 5 mins plus the stress of being accosted by a private resident!
We finally arrived at our farmhouse later than planned, but well before sunset which in these climes is not generally till after 9pm. Our charming host Cyrille welcomed us, and luckily spoke very reasonable English that determined we could go to nearby Cadouin for some food as we had discovered in the course of our travels that nothing, that means NOTHING, opens on Dimanche (Sunday) certainly after 12noon. We shower and refresh before heading into Cadouin, and after three wrong turns – it’s been a lo.........ng day discover the delightful restaurant opposite the abbey that Cyrille our host has booked us into. It is pumping and we guess the whole population of Cadouin must be here as there’s at least 50 people!. A pizza and goat’s cheese salad fills a hole and we successfully make it home to the Hamlet of Auriac and collapse into bed.