Essex to Sarlat

Early to rise this morning (1.30am to be precise). Jumped in car and off to Dover as we'd decided to use P&O this time instead of the Tunnel, which we seem to have been on since it opened. Fab crossing, and through Paris after their rush hour. Stopped a couple of times in various Aires on the way down the autoroute via Limoges and made it to our hotel in Soulliac by about 6pm. After we'd settled in, it was in the car again for a drive up the hills (seemed like mountains sometimes) of the Perigeux to Sarlat la Caneda, ostensibly for G to see the drama festival. The satnav took us what it thought was the shortest route, but was certainly the windiest route imaginable, but as we drove, we knew there was trouble ahead. It was getting as dark as night and we could catch glimpses of lightning in the distance, however, we pressed on and arrived in Sarlat just as the clouds lashed everything they had on the little town. Thunder, lightning and water on the Olympic swimming pool scale rained down on us. I've never seen a storm like it before - there must have been dozens of lightning strikes a minute. We parked near the top of a hill, opposite a cemetery and watched the water gushing from the holes in the stone wall, bring earth, sand and whatever else it picked up on the way.

'I don't think the drama will be on tonight' I think I said, so we re-programmed the satnav to get us out of there, but all the roads were blocked by other cars trying to escape. Some were being abandoned as the puddles became running ponds, we could see shopkeepers and residents trying to block their doorways as water ran in the front and out the back. More satnav fiddling and we take a few roads, their surface / kerbs hardly discernable in the water which was now a river. It leads us through an extremely narrow gap which lead to a track heading upward and into a dark forest which had yet another river of water and sediment raging down it. I manage a 5 or 7 point turn, thankful at least that we're in a 4x4, and squeeze back through the gap and know that to avoid the town we've got to turn left.

Every few seconds the lightning would light the way for us again and I would see a ditch here and a bottomless drop there. Edging our way down a few narrow tracks, a turn or two here and there and we see some taillights of other cars who have also found a way out of Sarlat. They soon either turn left or stop at driveways leading into woods and we're left alone again. After what seems ages following the twists and turns the nice lady on the satnav suggests to us, we recognise a road we came on and soon the rain is petering out and we're back at the hotel in Souillac. We certainly slept well that night, but the residents of Sarlat didn't. Some time after, I caught a glimpse of some French telly and they were asking that the town be declared an area of natural disaster. So perhaps we were very lucky that night to get out alive, dry and to be honest not really shaken by the experience, although some of us apparently thought otherwise! The Land Rover (for all their faults) had done good, as they say in sporting parlance.