Chateau de Commarque

Today we went to the fascinating town of Les Eyzies which claims to have found the highest number of Cro Magnon men in the world. I'm not sure about that, has anyone checked Newton Abbot? Anyway we had a wander around and a bit of lunch before carrying on to the Chateau de Commarque which I wanted to se because of what I had heard about this ivy strewn chateau which was barely visible until about 1990 when they decided to remove the ivy and all the shrubbery that had grown over it and to start the restoration work. I have to tell you that they've done a great job, although there's still plenty left to do.

We walked down to it from the car park in lovely sunshine but there were a few threatening clouds gathering. I found the light conditions quite testing even using a 0.6 grad to darken the sky a little. When we walked rack up the hill about two and a half hours later it was just starting to rain. It's a fascinating place and there's loads to see from the great military architecture above to the cave dwellings below.

After leaving there we looked for a supermarket to get a few bits as tomorrow is a public holiday in France. Whilst there I nearly bought a cheap Windows laptop but I couldn't stand the thought of learning Windows 8 while I'm on holiday. After my attempt at restoring the MacBook overnight, it seemed quite clear that it had eaten a second hard drive and although I'd got the operating system working there was nothing to reload my data on. I noticed a 500 Gig external hard drive in Intermarche for mot too much money and had the thought that I might be able to restore the system to that so I could limp on. It's worked, I'm pleased to say even if it's a bit of a faff.

Anyway thanks for you lovely comments on yesterday's abbey and I hope you'll like this long shot of the old chateau against the wooded hillside. Sorry for the lack of comments, it's been a bit hectic here with one thing and another.

David